


The First and Final War Between The Endermage and The Solutionist: Rythian Enderborn vs William Strife

by cadaeic



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Ensemble - Freeform, F/M, Gen, M/M, Most Of The Yogscast Are At The Very Least Mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-09 20:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadaeic/pseuds/cadaeic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aka “The Mystery of the Multiple Lalnas”</p><p>This fic contains 43% asskicking, 11% magic (Ender, Blood, Flux), 11% science, 35% chaos, 400% extra Lalnas and 0% sex. Although, really, it’s an excuse for Strife and Rythian to fight, with loss and love and shadows and grief in the background. All good ingredients for a war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the fool's world

**Author's Note:**

> Possible ships, whether intentional or hinted at, in no order: Laljin, Zoethian, Parvill, Honeyphos, Fizone, Lalnano, others???

* * *

 A world is a precious thing.

It must be protected.

 

A world is a _precious_ thing.

It must be treasured.

 

A world is a precious _thing._

It can be destroyed.

 

That's okay. We can get another one, and it'll be better, and it'll be bigger, and we can have more fun with it. The trees might be the same, or maybe there will be more colours. The leaves will be in your favourite colour this time, and we could build bigger and better things!

 

Maybe this time, the science and the magic don't have to fight. You would like that, wouldn't you?

 

A _world_ is a precious thing.

Maybe we don't have to destroy it.

 

 

Nah.

* * *

Panting, gasping, Zoeya _runs_. Her legs burn, not with the comforting fire of the Nether but the ferocious pain of exhaustion. She stumbles, she coughs and with her robotic arm she grasps for the presence of her dinosaur friend.

She falls, and sharp claws dig into her back. Teep pulls her back up in a rough motion and they set off again.

Through spindly branches and ragged leaves, they run, as they did so very long ago.

It hurts to run.

It hurts even more to run from-

And then, suddenly, Zoeya finds her thoughts interrupted by a terrible, shrieking wail.

* * *

 


	2. judge and jury

* * *

 

Finally, they had gotten the siren to work. It was a glorious thing that Lalna had jury rigged with Magic Missile and a Steel Crusher, but from what it sounded like, a dead cat must have been involved.

Or a Ghast.

Sjin fought to be heard above the din. "Can you make it any quieter!" he shouted, a hint of amused irritation still present in his voice.

"We're the Magic Police! We need to let EVERYBODY know we're coming, that they need to of our way!" Lalna touched a wire and winced as the sound shifted into an even more ear piercing tone.

"Who's going to get in our way?!" Sjin jammed his fingers into his ears, but it offered hardly any relief from the infernal din. It reminded him of a certain alarm from the early days of Sipsco, which certainly had a more palatable sound.

How he missed that place.

"Nobody, with this racket!"

Sjin turned to see a horrified Creeper staring at the siren. Creepers usually did look quite horrified, possibly at their circumstances - but this one was quite distinctively agape. It slowly began to puff up as it remembered what creepers were supposed to do.

Which was to die to a flurry of panicked Fireballs.

"You're attracting mobs!" Sjin yelled. "They're rubbernecking!"

"They don't even have necks!" Lalna screamed back.

All of this was cut short as the siren suddenly shattered. It was a curious thing - the world slowed the fuck down, and Sjin watched with detached interest as a shard of glass flew past his eyes.

The explosion was in a terribly familiar shade of purple. A _horribly_ familiar shade, often found in the depths of an Enderman's eyes.

As the world blurred and cleared, the Magic Police found themselves involuntarily taking a step back. As one, they looked up, and an expression of _oh crap_ appeared on both of their faces.

"Sjin. Lalna." The names were half growled, half hissed. "Working together. I should have known."

Undesirable Number One stood in front of them, bathed in flames straight from the End, and all Sjin could think to say was-

"We have a truce!"

However, Lalna actually remembered who they were. "Stop in the name of the Magic Police! You are under arrest for unlicensed magic!"

Rythian glared down at them. He wasn't wearing the white-purple coat that Sjin had seen on him last, but the sleeveless grey vest that he had worn when...

Well, before Lalna went and exploded the world.

"It appears," he growled, "you have your priorities confused." His purple eyes narrowed, and his face contorted into ferocious menace. "And of course you take it upon yourself to declare yourselves rulers of magic. Hypocrites." The last word was spat out. "You took Teep, you destroyed t- how, tell me, how could I ever suffer you two to live?"

"B-but remember?" With all the indignity and fear Sjin could muster up, his voice rose several octaves. "You came to my farm in the last world! I showed you my crops! I gave you a plane ride!"

Lalna gave a nervous laugh as he prepared a Fireball and carefully aimed it. "I-I don't think he remembers. Uh, take this!”

Fire, crackling in a perfect sphere, flew through the air and Rythian, with hardly an aside glance, simply teleported to the side. The tree behind him promptly went up in flames.

A few minutes later, two screams could be heard as the Magic Police made the wise decision to beat a tactical retreat.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! Allowing for communication all across the cube!>

<The time is: 9:54:09 am GMT>

<You are signed in as: ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡o͏̛ù̶̶s̷͞͏͟ >

 

<Sjin has logged on>

<Sjin> help! help!

<Sjin> rythians here and hes mad!

<Sjin> were running for our lives!

<Nilesy_> Maybe that’ll teach you to mess with the mages!

<ridgedog> flash a cardboard badge at him! or two!

<Sjin> no but hes actually crazy this time he actually wants to kill us its like hes back to singing “sjin and lalna are going to die” at the christmas party which was actually funny in a really sad way

<Sips> haha i remember that

<W_Strife> How are you finding the time to type all of this if you’re running for your lives?

<Sjin has logged off!>

<W_Strife> Whatever. You didn’t help when Parv was after me.

<W_Strife> But if you’re ever willing to pay, I have the solutions.

<W_Strife has logged off!>

 

<Zoey> rythian?

<Nilesy_> Didn't think he was here

<Nilesy_> We should catch up, like the old days!

<Zoey> uh

<Nilesy_> Whoops, sorry, I forgot

<Nilesy_> That might be a bit awkward

 

<Zoey> yeah

 

 

<̢͜ano̕n̸͞ý̕m̸̛o̢͞us̷ ͠҉͘h͏͟a̡s̛ ͜loģ̕g̢̕͢e̸̡͢d̷͘ ó̕f͝f̢́͜!>̨̧͟

 

* * *

 

Go to sleep, friend.

 

There is no one here to judge us, and if they do, I will take care of them.

 

They judged us in the first world for being special, didn’t they? It was a good judgement, but after a while it stung.

 

You wouldn’t remember that, though.

 

It would hurt too much.

 

* * *

 


	3. dismantle the stars, the moon and the sun

* * *

 

They had spent the night curled up in a hastily built shack, skin pressed against scales as the moon shone down through a tiny window. The languorous moans and bony clicks of the undead rattled through through the thin wood walls. Every hiss set Zoeya's hairs on edge, and so she stayed up trying to comfort the tired dinosaur and her companions in her inventory.

She had lost contact with Ringo the sheep and Paul the villager when they had crossed over, but Fishton the fish harmonica and the mushrooms George and John were safe with her. She smiled widely and told quiet stories of better times, of building a giant castle of black rock and exploring dangerous places, but always finding a way home.

Her voice cracked every time she mentioned Rythian.

Something had gone wrong. The crossing over should have been easy and painless. The equations had been checked and double checked, her for the technology side and Rythian for the magical parts. While most people ended up in the next world out of pure accident, she, Rythian and Teep were determined to get it right.

They were all alone, otherwise. Nilesy had gone with Lomadia and Cabertown must have slipped the cracks because all that was left was a gaping hole, just like where Honeydew Inc and SipsCo had been.

They held hands, her and Rythian and Teep, and stepped into the portal together. But there had been what could only be described as a ripping and a tearing, and a _presence_ and

she couldn't make sense of what she saw, what she had seen. For a moment, between the worlds, she could have sworn that-

it pressed all around her, an almost unimaginable cold holding her still. She couldn't scream because the ice was in her throat and her lungs. Through the ice, she could see grey metal and pipes and other pillars of ice.

She rather thought she saw, hazily, Lalna directly in front of her.

And then she had been yanked out of that cold, and thrust into bright light, a new world and Rythian having somehow regressed to his most angstiest of days.

That had been fun!

Zoeya told Teep about her experience as they built the shelter together, and had received a look of reptilian understanding and a furious nodding. She was- if not glad, then relieved that someone else knew what she had gone through.

Maybe Rythian had gone through the same thing, but why had he lost his memory? And how would that explain his change in clothes?

She drew closer to Teep, who gave a healthy dinosaur snort in his sleep. Just like how Rythian had helped her, she would return the favour and fix Rythian's memories with the power of friendship!

Or science, or magic!

Whatever it took to have Rythian back.

-even if it meant killing him-

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! Facilitating love across the blocks!>

<The time is: 1:32:27 am GMT>

<You are signed in as: ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ >

 

<Sjin has logged on!>

<Sjin> is anybody on

<Sjin> halp pls

<Sjin> hes been at it all day

<Sjin> and not in that way ;)

<W_Strife> Nice priorities.

<Sjin> anybody else

<W_Strife> It's the middle of the freaking night. You just missed Nilesy, and he probably would not be interested.

<W_Strife> Seeing as, you know, you are the magic police.

<Sjin> can you help us

<W_Strife> For a price.

<Sjin> we promise not to make fun of you anymore?

<W_Strife> How about something more substantial? Like a stack of blood soaked emerald blocks?

<Sjin> fine we owe you!

<W_Strife> Good.

<W_Strife> On my way.

<W_Strife has logged off!>

<Sjin has logged off!>

 

* * *

He clicked off the communicator and clipped it to his belt in one easy, practiced motion. His jet pack was already strapped to his back, and in fact he was already in the air. He had been heading to where his Digital Miner was stationed to collect some ores when the communicator had beeped.

Now, William Strife of the eponymous Strife Solutions had rather different plans.

A good ruthless businessman is always prepared. Strapped to his belt and in his pack was his trusty Atomic Disassembler, which should make short work of the mage.

Okay, so he would profess to rather admiring Rythian from what he had heard. In fact, Strife rather looked up to everybody else in this world, although he would loathe to admit it. Although his own knowledge trumped theirs, the others had a charming street smart knowledge and easygoing friendship that he quite envied.

Of course, this was a weakness, and to himself Strife vowed to rise to the top. And, this could be a very good opportunity to prove himself.

His communicator beeped. It was Parv on their private channel, #solutionsinchaos. Strife spared a brief thought to wonder just what Parv was doing at this time of night, although the same really could be said of himself.

Anyway, Parv was asking if he needed any help because hey, he just saw the conversation and what do you know, Parv was willing to help his friends! Besides, the blood of a powerful Ender Mage might be very useful, and please please please Strife?!!!!!

No, said Strife. You clearly have an ulterior motive here and this shouldn't be too difficult. All he has is that potty mouth magic, while I have _skills_ and technology.

Parv shot back: If you die, I told you so! And then he responded, rather coyly - see you soon, Willie.

Strife sighed and continued his lonely flight.

* * *

You were tired of death.

 

When she died- oh, yeah. You don’t quite remember her, do you? She was someone you loved, even if it was just for a day or so.

 

We spent so much time trying to rescue her, but… for what? To find her bones rotting in her cell? It took so long that we tried not to care because we knew she was dead, but you kept caring and in the end all that was left was dust.

 

You were tired of death, and you asked me to find a way so that nobody else would have to die.

 

I would have brought down the stars for you, friend. The stars, the moon, the sun - if you had asked for them, I would have delivered.

 

But to conquer death itself?

 

That was a challenge, and one I gladly accepted.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;  
> Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;  
> Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.  
> For nothing now can ever come to any good.  
> \- W. H. Auden


	4. the tower

* * *

 

Crimson flames. This was familiar.

_He_ hadn't started it. It was not quite in his nature to enact such destruction and death, but to stand in the midst of the ashes as the world burned and

 

_to burn with it._

 

He had tried to rebuild. He had tried to remake and to move past his own past, but in the end the destruction and the agony of

 

_of science_

 

had caught up with him, without his own knowledge!

Perhaps the nature of the end was too much within him to leave destruction behind.

He seethed. It was his right to do so, but no, he was not the victim, and he would no longer be that victim. Especially not to red haired girls who-

she had an arm of metal, and how could she add such insult to injury after that final betrayal how-

Someone coughed, someone above him, and instinctively he _twisted_ space to appear at the side and raised his blade-

"What do we have here?" The voice had the same self-assurance that Sjin or Lalna's when they had the upper hand. There was the faintest echo of Ridgedog, but it wasn't him either.

"Perhaps you should mind your own business," Rythian said, without looking up.

"When you came into this world and started causing problems, you became my business," drawled the other person.

"I have no issue with you." That was true.

"Oh! But you see, Sjin and Lalna might say the opposite. Their payment certainly did."

And _now_ Rythian glared upwards, and now he hissed, "a mercenary." The man above him didn't quite look the part with a crisp vest on an ironed red shirt, but the jetpack and the ominous blue scythe definitely said otherwise. Rythian clenched his fist and began to prepare a spell.

"Just a businessman."

"No wonder you're all talk and no fight," Rythian said, and with a flick he unleashed a bolt of magical energy.

This banter with this barely restrained tension bubbling behind the surfaces reminded Rythian so much of those disastrous battles that destroyed worlds. They thought it was a game, killing and playing mixed together until the two were indistinguishable.

The other man shot upwards to avoid the spell. He spiralled back down, equally as ungraceful as his ascent. Technology, no matter how much it dressed up and grew up - it could never approach the simplicity and elegance of magic.

Technology didn't come with common sense either, because the stranger flew straight into the next spell. It hit him on one wing of the jetpack and pushed him away, but he rapidly gained control.

That was alright. Rythian wasn’t aiming to kill.

The man jetted down, but he didn’t quite land. “Hey! I was rather enjoying our little chat,” he said as he advanced. The scythe in his hand was glowing with a wicked edge. From what little Rythian could remember, this scythe could cut through atoms. One hit to an unarmoured person and they would fall.

Apprehensive, he backed away. “I don’t even know your name!” he said, and he hated himself for giving in to the inane conversation but if he was to kill this interloper, he should at least know who would _dare_ stand up for Sjin and Lalna.

With a cocky smile, the man swung the scythe at him. “William Strife,” he said. “And I’m going to take you down.”

* * *

A large explosion rocked the house and sent Sjin sprawling onto the ground. The items he had been preparing to dump from the chest into his inventory scattered around and onto his prone body as another explosion occurred much closer. A Fireball spell rolled in front of his face and idly scorched the lovely blue carpet.

Not that it would have done anything - their house was already on fire! They couldn't save it now, not with a vengeful Enderbutt around, even if he was distracted by Strife. This was just salvaging what they could find, a bit like a dream Sjin had where Xephos ate all the fruits while under attack by a Ghast.

That was a _weird_ dream.

Sjin scrambled for the fallen items and rolled onto his back to find Lalna frantically grabbing at the magic rituals and chalks and stuff. "Sjin, get the statues!" Lalna said. "And the crops!"

The statues! How else could they remind themselves of the dangerous threat of unlicensed magic?! Although if he thought about it, the threat of Rythian right now was a pretty good reminder.

He stumbled downstairs and out the burning, wheaty door to see one decidedly unstatuelike Rythian and a whole lot of gravel where the statues should be.

If Sjin had been entered into the u-turning championships of the multiverse at that moment, he would have won all three places and crashed into the judge at the same time. Alas, perhaps returning into a burning house was not the perfect choice of venue.

Strife was on the stairs, rubbing his neck and looking wholly out of place with his technology amongst tattered magical tapestries. "Jeeze, you could have warned me!" he said.

Sjin almost rolled his eyes. "We did! Where's Lalna?!"

"Out! Like you should be!" Strife stood up and with a flick of some button, zoomed past Sjin and through the hay covered doors.

Lalna was outside, trying to salvage the garden seeds. This was also a bad idea as Rythian was advancing on him, black fire crackling around him and a fierce red blade. Sjin was just about to cry out when Strife crashed into Rythian, sending both of them flying away from Lalna.

"The seeds!" Lalna shouted. "Sjin!"

Sjin lunged forward and grabbed his partner's hand. The rubber glove was a welcome sensation in this burning world, and Sjin didn't think he wanted to let go. "Don't worry about the seeds, you idiot! Let's get outta here!"

They lurched away from the scene, leaning on each other for support as the battle shook the world.

* * *

High above the ground, two were riding the skies.

Nano swooped down in front of Lalna, cheering as she did so. She could see everything! The feeling of seeing those tiny trees, the little lakes and occasionally the tiny people was so great for such a… _vertically challenged_ person such as herself, and she could imagine herself as a giant while up here.

The breeze whooshing past her face also blocked out the call of the tainted flux, which she did feel a bit uneasy about. Everything else made up for it, though.

Lalna laughed and said something, but it was lost in the wind.

There was smoke on the horizon, and down below, two people seemed to be running. They didn’t seem to be anyone Nano recognized - one was really green, and the only green guy around was Alsmiffy but he’d always be in a group of three, right?

And, on a further glance, that looked like Zoey.

Nano, if not close friends with Zoey, quite liked her. She had heard that in a previous world, Zoey had been an apprentice just like her! But Zoey didn't talk about it, and Nano hadn't pressed.

Nano shouted out to Lalna that she was going to land, but she didn’t think that he heard her. She began to spiral down, carefully keeping an eye on the runners as well as that ominous smoke.

When she got closer, she saw that It was Zoey and she was accompanied by a dinosaur.

“Hey! Zoey!” Nano shouted. “Whatcha running from?”

Zoey stopped in her tracks and glanced at her. Her expression was hard to make out, but it seemed to be of great confusion. “Who the butts are _you_ and how do you know my name?!” she shouted back.

“It’s- it’s me, Nanosounds! I came over to Mushbury a while back!”

The dinosaur seemed to be aiming an arrow at her, which was very rude. Nano opened her mouth to say something, and then the dinosaur jerked his arrow upwards to aim at-

Lalna had caught up.

Nano landed rather gracefully, or so she thought. Lalna fluttered to the ground slightly awkwardly, and she couldn’t help but chuckle. She turned to Zoey, and saw both her and the dinosaur staring at Lalna.

“Zoey! Long time no see!” Lalna said in an overly cheerful tone.

Zoey just stared.

“Still mad about the bomb?”

There was, indeed, more staring.

“How’s Mushbury Island and Fiona?”

Zoey blinked a few times and then said, “Uh, first, I’m Zoey _a_ and Mushbury Island sounds all kinds of hecka awesome but I’ve never been there! And I don’t know a Fiona, and- look, we just came over from the last world and Rythian’s gone weird!”

“Rythian? Here?” Lalna’s eyebrows went up. “But he had that truce with Sjin and me, right?”

While those two were reminiscing about the past, Nano had been looking down at her communicator, catching up. Yeah, Rythian was tormenting Sjin and Lalna (maybe that was a mistake, Lalna was here), and then that Strife guy was now fighting him, and-

There was something wrong here.

“Uh, guys,” Nano said, a bit hesitantly. “How can Zoey be here talking to us and not have her walkie talkie out… while she’s talking on the chat?”

Apparently when you drop a bombshell like this on a conversation, your next move should not be to put forwards your theory of aliens.

* * *

“Oh, what do we have here, lads?”

“Looks like it’s the cops.”

“Don’t you know where you are? You’re in Hatcorp land, mate. You’re _sleeping_ in Hatcorp land.”

“If we’re not allowed to sleep here, you certainly aren’t allowed to!”

“And we own the fuckin’ place!”

“Don’t be rude to the mea- the guests! Perhaps we could be of some help!”

“We heard! We heard from a little birdie that you have some Rythian problems.”

“This little birdie also told us that you don’t have a home anymore!”

“This birdie can also give you a free complimentary massage, but unfortunately we couldn’t bring him to soothe your aching backs because he’s agoraphobic, the poor fucker.”

“But what we can offer you is a trip out of here!”

“A one way trip to safer ground!”

“Free of Rythians!”

“You’ll owe us.”

“You already owe Strife, some more loans can’t hurt!”

“If we get rid of Strife, does their debt to him come to us?”

“Yes, this is a one time only free deal and it’s going, going-”

“And you’re gone!”

“Which book did you just push into their sleepy little faces, Ross?”

“I think it’s the Hole Diggers one."

“... Ohoho.”

 "Ohohoho, indeed."

* * *

 


	5. the devil you know

* * *

 Hanging in the air above a pile of smouldering ashes, Strife caught his breath. He wished he had a healing potion, even if it was - eurgh - magic.

The woods were wrecked, and most of it was, admittedly, because of Strife swinging his combination sword/axe/pickaxe/shovel indiscriminately. For fighting, the Disassembler was not a precise weapon.

Which could be a problem here.

Fighting Rythian was an experience, and that was particularly distressing because Strife, if not a great fan of it, at least _knew_ the vague basics of the magics in this world. Magic changed from world to world, and this particular land had a great many ways to mess with the laws of nature and to screw you over along with it.

Rythian’s magic wasn’t from this place, and normally magic items that were incompatible with the world they were in just did not work.

Or, they did work, but they ended up destroying the world and fucking things up even more than magic already did.

He hoped that maybe Rythian wasn’t doing that.

Strife took a deep breath and prepared to start looking for Rythian, but before he could descend downwards he felt a hand

~~claws~~

around his neck.

“I can fly too,” Rythian said, almost casually. Such a tone of voice could never be casual, and it still held the slow burn of hate within it. “Your technology might offer you everything you’ve ever _wanted_ , but it closes your mind, _Strife_.” He pulled at Strife's neck, and a dark fiery pain welled up deep in his throat.

Strife grabbed at Rythian's arm- pulling and flailing and gasping. His other hand still had his Disassembler, so he yanked that up and in blind panic, slashed at Rythian.

Rythian howled and loosened his grip.

_A quick dissertation on the nature of the Atomic Disassembler. It cleaves atoms apart, and contains the resulting nuclear explosion as a release of great heat. This heat can be dissipated in harmless ways with a few modifications, of course._

But Strife, ever the economist to not spare unneeded rare materials, had opted to keep the excruciating, searing _pain_.

Strife whipped around to see Rythian clutching at his face and hissing. The weapon had cut through Rythian’s bandana, and a chunk of his cheek was missing.

And, his _face_...

“I-I’m sorry!” Strife said, half out of horrified instinct. “I- jeeze- didn’t mean to do that!” He reached a hand, to comfort or to perhaps to end his suffering-

Rythian looked up. His eyes glowed with cyan hate. He said nothing, but nothing needed to be said.

Strife readied his weapon, and prepared to strike, when from the sky fell a speeding, black bullet.

Both of them looked up and observed as it approached. It rapidly became obvious that the blob was Parv, especially when it started shouting Strife’s name.

“Parv, get out of here!” Strife shouted back. He couldn’t quite hear what Parv replied, but it sounded suspiciously like “It’s Parving time!”

Change of plans.

Strife jetted upwards, towards the falling Parv. He wasn’t quite sure if he was going to catch him or knock some sense into him, but either would be perfectly fine. His question was answered when Parv fell past him, missing him by inches. Strife charged up his velocity and zoomed downwards.

Parv looked like he was landing on a tree. He seemed to be looking around in confusion, and when Strife was closer, Parv shouted up, “He’s _gone_!”

Strife stopped his fall and turned around, in all four directions. Parv was right. Rythian was gone.

Had he gone to lick his wounds?

Well, he was glad that Parv hadn’t gotten himself mixed up in this mess. It might have gotten a lot bloodier than Strife had planned. He had only intended on killing Rythian a little bit, just enough to get him to back off from Sjin and Lalna.

A good respawning did tend to knock some sense into people, after all.

Parv’s voice, indignant and loud, interrupted Strife’s thoughts. “Damn it! I wanted to cut him and show him how much better Blood Magic is than that _stupid_ Ender Magic! And- Strife, imagine what I could do with his blood! Maybe I could, like, teleport everywhere and then you’d be like holy shit Parv and you’ll be impressed!”

“You and teleportation might not mix so well, Parvis,” Strife said, wryness in his voice.

“Yeah, but, Strife, when have you ever known me to mix with anything well, huh? Parv mixes with nothing! Parv stops for no man! Parv mixes with no man!”

Strife choked.

“Okay, but, he’s clearly gone off because you beat him, right?” If a grown man could look like a small, inquisitive child, then Parv was trying to do his best impression of that grown man.

“Uh,” Strife said. “He’s… he’s definitely coming back for round two.” He had seen the End itself in Rythian’s eyes, and by _fuck_ it was terrifying.

Parv looked thoughtful, which was a strange look on the man. “But- okay, you’re going to need a good few days to heal up and to get better gear to trounce him with, right? Am I right, Strife?”

“Yeah,” Strife said slowly.

“Well, why don’t I go and fuck with him while you do that?”

“Absolutely not.”

Parv pouted. This would have looked cute on anyone _but_ Parv. “Why not?! You’re just hogging all the fun to yourself!”

"Hey, this isn't fun! It's a business deal! And- he's tough. Really tough."

With the beadiest puppy dog eyes he could muster, Parv said in his sweetest tone, "Strife, pleaaaaaaase!"

As he did many a time he dealt with Parvis, Strife sighed. "Fine! I give you my permission to fuck with him, though you'd probably go after him if I said no. Just don't get yourself killed, okay?"

And now, Parv’s mouth slowly stretched into his signature disturbing grin.

"You won't regret it, Strife," he said.

He hoped he wouldn't.

* * *

The pain was absolute. It reached into every nerve and every vein and tore at it with a million tiny claws, biting and burning and-venough! He grit his teeth. He could not- should _not_ succumb to this! He had not knelt to Lalna, and would not bow to _Strife the fucker burn him tear him a p a r t_

He crashed through dead leaves and darkened trees in his haste to get away. Twigs snatched at the wound on his face, dirt tripped at his feet but he would not be deterred.

Finally, when the pain died down, Rythian found himself... somewhere.

He did not care.

The flames had not reached here yet. The trees were different from back there, and from the ones near the ruins Blackrock Castle. Here, they reached for the silent moon with twisted, turning branches, blackened as the sky but not with flame or dust. The moon high in the sky was mocking him, and he could swear that he could almost hear laughter.

He _could_ hear something. This was not the soft murmurs of the natural nightlife, but purposeful speech from something human.

"Show yourself," he said, his voice dark and quiet. His voice was still raw from the pain.

The rustling intensified, and from the bushes stepped two dark figures.

"Nilesy. Lomadia." He knew that they had been working together, but the two were as different as night and day.

Or as an owl and a cat.

Suddenly self conscious, Rythian pulled at his cloak to cover where Strife had cut away the fabric. He cursed the man - in one swoop, he had hurt him and tore away his shame.

They looked different, though. Nilesy bore his usual, sly smirk, but he was wearing a strange green armour that reeked of magic, and around his neck were runes and feathers and chalk ona stringed necklace. Upon his hat was a stereotypical wizard's hat with stars stuck on, and Rythian, if he had been in a better mood, would have laughed.

Lomadia had epaulettes of gold stylised as feathers and golden gloves which glowed dimly in the dark, leading Rythian to suspect that she had mixed glowstone with gold to achieve that effect. She still wore her owl hat, although it had been adorned with runes and feathers as well.

Wordlessly, Lomadia nodded, her expression still and grim.

"Hey, Rythian!" Nilesy said. He sounded just as cheerful as ever. "We heard about the fighting, and we thought we'd come and chill, you know?"

"What do you want?" He would have snapped at them, but this was Nilesy. Nobody could get mad at Nilesy - mildly exasperated, yes, or even very annoyed, but not angry. The ache from the wound was also making him wince as he spoke.

"You see," Lomadia said, dipping her head slightly in a birdlike fashion. "A lot of things have happened on this world. Lalna and Sjin are the Magic Police, and we're learning the art of Witchery."

Witches. Rythian wouldn't have thought that Nilesy or Lomadia would get into the magical arts, least of all the strange ritualistic methods of the witches, but he supposed stranger things had happened.

"We've had a bit of a truce with the other magic users of this world, you know? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we don't fuck with each other because why not fuck with the police?" Nilesy beamed at this, and Rythian rather thought that a lot of fucking with the police had occurred. "So we've been pretty cool with Strife, because he's with Parv."

"What does Parv do?" asked Rythian.

"Blood magic."

 _Blood magic_. Disgusting. Far better to draw from natural forces than either from one's life or the lives of others, and the depths of depravity that some blood mages could sink to were better not thought about.

"We just learned that Parvis has been locking up our kindred witches, hurting them and forcing them to use their magic to heal themselves," said Lomadia, her eyes narrowing and her mouth twisting into a scowl.

 _That_ was depraved. Rythian drew back in horror and disgust. "And Strife associates with him?" he spat out.

"Yup! So we're not very impressed with either of them. But! If we work together, then it could benefit both you and us!" Nilesy's tone of voice never changed, and now he looked up at Rythian expectantly. "I bet both you and he'll be out of action for a good few days, and in that time, Lomadia and I could get him out of your hair. Just think about it, will you?"

He had never been impressed with Nilesy's pool making skills, but now he was very much impressed. Rythian did not even have to think.

"Deal," he said.

The wild, wild moon laughed as the three spirited off into the night.

* * *

Amazingly enough, when Sjin and Lalna had been teleported to a tiny little island in the distant north, they did not wake up. They had been so tired from their exodus from their home that not even magical displacement disturbed their dreams.

What _did_ wake them up was a shriek of surprise, and then the sudden realisation that they seemed to be propped up against a notice board. The shriek was also very, very familiar.

"Lalna! What are you doing slacking off?! And don't bring your one night stands home! Get up!" Honeydew was wielding the same ominously blue thing that Strife had, and was brandishing it.

"I-I'm not a one night stand! I'm classier than that!" Sjin said as he jerked awake. He frantically glanced around to see dirt and ocean. "We're not in Kansas anymore!"

"Up! Up!" Honeydew began to hit both of them with the stick end of his weapon, which, thankfully, was not as dangerous as the blue bit.

And so this scene was what Xephos and Lalna found when they returned from checking on Pretty Island. Honeydew was chasing Lalna and Sjin around the noticeboard as if to the tune of Yakety Sax.

He did seem to be having great fun, but there was a greater issue at hand.

"Why," Xephos said, "are there two Lalnas?"

Honeydew just stopped in his tracks, and so did the two he was pursuing. He scratched his head and glanced from one Lalna to the other. Nobody spoke as they tried to parse just what was going on.

The Lalna that had been with Xephos strode up to Sjin's Lalna and stared, eye to eye and goggles to goggles. He poked the lab coat with a finger and said, disbelievingly, "same coat?"

The other Lalna looked down at the gloved finger and held up his own hand. "Same coat!" he said, at a complete loss for any other words. He held out his hand, and the other Lalna reached out and lamely shook it.

This extremely riveting conversation was broken by Honeydew echoing Xephos' words. "Why the _fuck_ are there two Lalnas?!" he said.

"Are they multiplying or something? Sjin, why didn't you tell me when we were on our farm?!"

Xephos gave Sjin an accusing look, to which Sjin threw up his hands and said, "I thought my Lalna was the same as your Lalna! I don't know anything about this! I've never seen them in the same place!"

"But surely someone must have realised!" Xephos rubbed his head and groaned. "Has no one realised- surely we must have realised from the chat or something!"

"Hey, we're still here!", one of the Lalnas said. This one was wearing the Magic Police robes over his lab coat. "We must have the same chat account - hey, is your account LividCoffee too?"

"Yeah, it is," the other Lalna said. "Wow, we think alike! This is so cool!"

"It really is!"

Xephos groaned again, even louder this time. "No, this is not cool, this is an utter headache! How are we supposed to tell you apart?! What are we supposed to call you?!"

Sjin sniggered. "One of them should be the cool Lalna, obviously my Lalna, and the other one is the lame-o." This prompted a "hey!" from both Lalnas.

“Why don’t we call one Lalna and the other LividCoffee?” Honeydew asked, looking unusually reflective.

“But we’re both Lalna!” Lalna said.

“Alright then!” Honeydew jabbed his finger at ‘his’ Lalna. “You can be Livid and you,” he said as he pointed his finger at Sjin’s Lalna, “can be Coffee.” The two Lalnas opened their mouths to argue, but Honeydew shushed them. “ _I’m_ the CEO around here! No arguments!”

Sjin nodded, just relieved to get this confusion under control. He looked over at Xephos to gauge his reaction, but saw that the other man had a look of absolute horror on his face, staring agape at his communicator. “What is it?” he asked.

Xephos gulped. “I think we have a problem,” he said. “Look at the chat.”

Sjin took out his own communicator and scanned the chat. Oh, god.

Oh, _Notch_.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! Crafting channels along the geometries!>

<The time is: 4:13:20 pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ >

<Nanosounds> zoey! zoey! are you there?

<saberial> what business d’you have with her?

<LividCoffee> i really need to talk to her fiona

<saberial> shes busy doing mushroomy stuff

<saberial> anything you can say to her you can say to me

<LividCoffee> well fine then

<LividCoffee> we have another zoey!

<saberial> huh?

<LividCoffee> like an alternate universe zoey who

<LividCoffee> remember when we came over and started talking about rythian and you were trying to fight us and zoey didnt know anything about him  
<LividCoffee> yeah we found the zoey that does know about it!

<saberial> zoey did talk about that when we first met… it was weird

<saberial> still not convinced though

<Zoey> fi who are you talking to

<LividCoffee> zoey! hi! this is another zoey from another world using lalnas account

<LividCoffee> wow this is so weird

<saberial> how do we know you’re telling the truth?

<LividCoffee> well i believe her

<LividCoffee> wtb i can see lalna and hes not on

<LividCoffee> uh so you know how you have two zoeys

<Xephos> we have two lalnas.

<Xephos> NOT including the one you have.

<Sjin> a preposterous amount of lalnas!

<saberial> …

<Zoey> wtb

<Zoey> this is so weird but so cool!

<saberial> you believe them?!

<Zoey> the other zoey said wtb and thats what i say!

<saberial> alright sugar but im keeping an eye on you

<LividCoffee> so i guess the zoeys and the lalnas should meet up

<Sjin> yeah but we’re all the way across the world! how can we all get into the same place?

<Trottimus> GET A BIG GREASY COCK IN YOUR HOLE BUY MONSTER COCKS TODAY

<djh3max> Wrong service Trott!

<Trottimus> Aw man!

<alsmiffy> what we’re trying to say is that hatcorp is now offering, in addition to our deeds services, easy transportation to the base of your choice!

<djh3max> After all, we did send Sjin and Lalna to Hole Diggers!

<Sjin> wait that was you?! you jerks! we were sleeping!

<alsmiffy> i couldn’t hear you over the sound of us eating this delicious angry chicken

<Honeydew> you sent us here you can send us back!

<Honeydew> you will bring us back here right? hole diggers cannot go on without us

<Trottimus> Sure, sure, we won’t screw you over

<alsmiffy> like we already have

<Honeydew> huh?

<djh3max> Too late, Hatcorp incoming!

<Honeydew> WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING

<Honeydew has logged off!>

<Xephos has logged off!>

<Sjin has logged off!>

<LividCoffee has logged off!>

<LividCoffee has logged off!>

<Zoey> uh

<LividCoffee> where are you sending them?

<alsmiffy> to your place!

<saberial> get away fro

<Zoey has logged off!>

<saberial has logged off!>

<Nanosounds> uh lalna i think we better tidy up

* * *

 

To learn what Death was, I had to kill you.

 

It wasn’t anything personal.

 

It was so very personal.

 

Again, and again, and again, even past the point where you begged me - no more, no more! But, dear friend, you set me on this path, and it hurt me no less than it did you.

 

I had to find the limits. I had to find out what we were. I let you kill me a few times, and together we sank into the cold.

 

From cold, we were born.

 

To cold, we die.

 

And what we were? I thought we might be gods at one point.

 

We weren’t.

 

But we could be.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "wtb" is an abbreviation for What The Butts or What The Boobs.


	6. tempting death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: so much blood at the very end. thank you, parv.

* * *

 

The witches’ hut was small but packed with magical paraphernalia. Rythian had to bend down to avoid hitting his head on a cluster of ingredients hanging from the ceiling. He glanced over shelves of hastily bound books and scribblings of practice rituals tossed around haphazardly, and noted how much it resembled the evil witches of the swamps.

The garden of trees and magical crops outside was very impressive, though. Zoey would have been proud of it.

Rythian involuntarily hissed at the mental mention, drawing the attention of the witches. “You okay, buddy?” Nilesy asked.

Lomadia went over to a countertop, shoved half the clutter onto the floor and then began to prepare some concoction. “He needs healing, that’s what he needs,” she said.

“This kind of wound needs a few days to heal, even with healing potions,” Rythian said. “And I need a few days to get my bearings..”

“We _could_ just kill you and collect you when you respawn!” Nilesy sounded like he was joking, but he looked seriously.

Rythian shivered. So, respawning worked here. The one worry of all the world travellers was that the system would no longer work, and the people who had grown used to cheating death would walk gladly to their doom, never to return. Dying and respawning was not pleasant, though. They said that there was a terrible, bitter cold between the lives, and that those who woke from after death would be forever different from who they were before. Everyone died, but the memory of the between was too traumatic to recall - so everyone avoided dying.

“No thanks,” Rythian said.

“We can’t really keep you here, though. We have no space!” Lomadia reached upwards, her fingers gently brushing several herbs until she found the one she wanted. She pulled at it forcefully, and a few other herbs fell with it.

Nilesy was looking thoughtful. “Hey, Cabertown just appeared a few days before you did. You could always stay over there.”

“Cabertown? Does Ravs have a town now?” He shuddered at the thought.

Nilesy looked at him oddly. “Yeah, don’t you remember? Used to be Sick Bay, where you nursed Zoey ba-”

Rythian actually growled. “Do _not_ mention her name!”

Nilesy took a step back and threw his hands up. “Okay, okay, okay! Man, some shit must have gone down after we left. You can tell us about it later when you’re feeling better, okay? Look, uh, Lomadia’s just going to give you some healing potions and stuff, and I’ll give you the directions to Cabertown, alright?”

“You won’t come with me?” Rythian supposed he was disappointed.

Nilesy winked. “Unfortunately, we have some business to get to. Now, man, while Lomadia’s cooking up her magic, man, I have _got_ to show you what we’ve been up to!” He put one arm around Rythian’s shoulders and led him out, talking about his latest achievements. Rythian followed, feeling bemused.

When they had left, Lomadia shut the door behind them and looked around the hut. Something was off, but she couldn’t see anything wrong in this mess. She shrugged, and continued her work.

If she had looked more closely, perhaps she could have seen Parvis just outside the hut.

* * *

The first thing to be tested was the hypothesis that touching an alternate universe version of yourself would result in an anticlimactic explosion, killing everybody and everyone. Thankfully, that did not happen when the two Lalnas were deposited on a heap on top of the third.

Thankfully as well, using magical books for transport meant that people arrived separately and not inside each other.

Xephos and Sjin arrived, their long limbs tangled up in what looked like a riveting game of Twister. Honeydew plopped out of thin air and landed on top of the duo, his bulk causing quite a lot of complaints from Xephos.

Zoey and Fiona arrived in slightly less of a tangled mess, although Fiona was brandishing a sword and Zoey was brandishing a mushroom. Zoeya was happy to see how her love of mycology had carried over, and wow, Zoey’s outfit was _stylin’._ That purple space catsuit with a pink heart and a lovely white turtleneck was wonderful, and that rainbow cape was - _ohmigosh_ \- fantastic!

Zoey seemed to be admiring her outfit as well, which Zoeya did blush at. The mushroom was lowered and Zoey said, “Wow, nice arm! And that shirt!”

“Thanks!” Zoeya said.

They proceeded to perform a high five, and it was the most awesome high five ever. Even Fiona smiled at this.

Zoeya rather thought that Zoey was so, so very lucky to find this beautiful lady. She seemed as serious as a pair of boots, but with a rugged charm that captured hearts and gold. And those rainbow bangs!

Wow!

She tore her eyes from the marvellous ladies to glare at the three Lalnas, who had succeeded in disentangling themselves and were in a deep discussion. She wasn’t sure which one had placed the bomb, and she _was_ of the mind that an eye for an eye was a bit of rubbish, so she settled for a knowing smile.

One of the Lalnas was wearing magical green robes, one had his labcoat undone and had a purple shirt and neon shoelaces and one was your usual garden variety Lalna. They were beginning to argue, with the magical Lalna gesticulating something and the hipster Lalna facepalming.

Xephos cleared his throat. He was rubbing his elbow and pointedly not looking at the Sjin sprawled on the floor or the Honeydew nibbling on a spare Jaffa Cake. He looked like he was trying to say anything, but the Lalna argument was getting louder, if not any less undecipherable.

That was fine!

“Zoey- _a_ , is it? Ohmigosh, welcome to this world!” Zoey was beaming as she said this. “So you’re the one who had all those adventures with Rythian and… Tee?”

Teep growled at this, but it wasn’t a malicious growl. He and Nanosounds had been standing at the side, watching and laughing at the teleporting people. Zoeya didn’t quite know what went on in the dinosaur’s brain, but she did know that Teep might have to get used to the idea of two Zoeyas.

Zoeya laughed and said, “Teep! And yeah, Rythian’s my friend too - but he…” Her voice trailed off, but she knew she had to continue. “Rythian’s forgotten a humongous chunk of our life together, and he thinks I betrayed him. I didn’t, though! But I’m going to get him back!”

“We’ll do whatever we can to help, right, Fifi?”

 ‘Fifi’ gave a noncommittal grunt. “Isn’t Rythian fighting that War guy or something?”

“Strife!” said Sjin, who had managed to get to his feet. “Yeah, he offered and now we owe him. Rythian just appeared outta nowhere and attacked us, though!”

Teep took out a bow very, _very_ deliberately and began to notch an arrow. Not being that stupid, Sjin quickly said, “Okay, okay! So I dinonapped your dinosaur and Lalna blew your castle up and we did explode the world but that was _ages_ ago! And Rythian made a truce!”

“Which he’s forgotten,” one of the Lalnas said, the hipster one. They seemed to have finished their argument, and were standing to attention now. “We decided- the Lalna with Sjin’s gonna be called Coffee, the Hole Digger one is Livid and I’m… Duncan.”

“You were arguing about what to call yourselves?!” Xephos said incredulously, at the same time that Honeydew said, “ _Duncan_?!”

“Hey, I like the name!” ‘Duncan’ said.

“Actually, we all like the name because we’re the same person,” said ‘Coffee’.

Livid interjected with, “Slightly different, though!”

“That’s not important, though!” said Xephos. “You can- you can call yourself anything! What’s important is-”

“Rythian,” Zoeya said. Everyone turned to look at her, and she wanted to disappear. She had to speak, though. “He’s- he’s regressed to the time when he really wanted to kill Lalna and Sjin, and he’d destroy the world to do it. And he thinks I betrayed him for technology.” It was hard to get the words out.

Everyone went silent.

“So we need to find out what took his memory and restore it to him!” Zoey smiled, and Zoeya tried to smile with her, albeit a bit shakily. “All of us working together can do it! We Zoeys are pretty good with technological stuff, and the three Lalnas could probably do anything!”

“We just need to figure it out before Strife can’t distract Rythian anymore,” Coffee said.

“How long can he hold on for?” Zoey didn’t know about this Strife person, but she was full of hope for the first time in a few days.

Livid shrugged. “Let’s hope long enough.”

* * *

Strife was busying himself with work, fixing up his jetpack and straightening out the dings in the armours. Well, he was trying to busy himself, but his thoughts kept returning to his friend. He could just take out the communicator and ask, but what if Parv hadn’t muted the walkie talkie and the sound meant death? But, what if Parv had been ambushed himself, and was lying in a ditch somewhere?

Not that he totally cared, but he did. Parv was dangerous, Parv was chaotic and Parv was a maniac, but he was fun to chill with and he seemed to genuinely like Strife, which was a novel concept to the ruthless businessman.

He sighed. There was no use worrying. Strife put down his tools and sat down on a nearby chair, just feeling exhausted from all the thoughts in his head. An old book lay open on the desk next to him, and Strife glanced over.

It was an ancient book about the End. He had hoped that it would provide some insights, perhaps in what an Endermage would be weak against and what Strife should focus on building, but the book lacked any useful information. All it had was conjecture and fairy tales about the origin of the End, talking of ancient princesses and nonsense like that.

He glanced at a window and saw the brilliant sunset. Even if he didn’t want to, at some point he needed to get some shuteye, and he needed to let his body rest. He walked into the teleportation portal and into his bedroom, which was quite spartan since he had not decorated it yet.

He wasn't quite expecting to be struck in the back of the neck when he stepped into the room, nor was he quite expecting to fall unconscious. Strife’s body hit the ground with a heavy thud, and the last thing he sensed was a strange, sparkling smell.

* * *

Cabertown seemed a subdued place, clearly once fallen from a former splendour. The sandstone was wearing down into cracks and spirals. The people walked with heavy heads. The mine’s entrance, like a monstrous maw, gaped as workers trudged in and out.

Rythian just stared. They reminded him of… well, him, and while confronting the vicious monster in the mirror is pretty bad, confronting the uncaring drudgery of reality is worse. He wondered if it would still be like this after he killed Lalna and Sjin.

“Rythian! Long time, no see!” Rythian heard the familiar voice of Ravs behind him, and turned to see the familiar kilt-wearing bartender in a mayoral sash. “Didn’t know you were coming!” he said.

“Yeah, I’m here on the down low. Need a place to rest for a few days.”

Ravs took his arm and ushered him through the town surprisingly quickly, talking fast about the past, a clear distractor from the town. Rythian let the words and the bullshitting wash over him as he stumbled through.

He needed a rest.

They stopped at a house that didn’t look any different from any other, although Ravs said that it was a special house, it was _his_ house well all the houses were his now and he was a very good mayor.

Rythian nodded.

However, when they opened the door, what greeted them was _not_ a home, but the corpses of a lot of villagers, an ominous stone altar and a man perching on the altar like a goblin in a black shirt. This was the man who had fallen from the sky, _Parvis_.

“Hey!” Parvis waved enthusiastically with bloody hands. “I found this in your basement! It was a bit of a bitch dragging it up your stairs, but now you don’t have to keep this a secret! Except I accidentally killed the people you were keeping it a secret _from_ , but it’s no less than what _you_ do. You eat people! I don’t do that.”

Rythian stared in shock at Ravs. How this world corrupted the innocent! It deserved to die.

“I don’t- I don’t eat people! I only eat the rude!” Ravs was spluttering now in a very un-mayorlike fashion. “They were rebelling against me!”

“Rude!” Parv leaned back and gave a hyena-like laugh. “At least _I_ don’t excuse what I do. I’m just chaotic, I make no excuses and that’s a fucking _miracle_.”

Rythian was just shaking with absolute rage. “How did you find me,” he hissed. “How did you get here?!”

“I followed you. Well, went ahead of you, because clearly Blood Magic is sooooo much better than Ender Magic. Hah! Parvy wins again!” Parv’s mouth split open into a most disquieting grin, and he held up a glass orb that was dripping with blood. “But, really, nobody wins, and I think that’s so much better that way, isn’t it?”

And he smashed the orb onto the floor.

Rythian took out his katar and advanced. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “You and Strife.”

“Oh! Oh! We’re famous!” Parv did not flinch as Rythian approached. “Do you want an autograph? My autograph’s gotta be worth loads, I’m part of a band, you know.”

He put in all the power he could muster, and stabbed at the bloody mage. He stabbed Parv in the stomach, again and again and again, and all Parv did was laugh.

“You’re going to be as bad as me one day!” he said. Casually, as if Rythian wasn’t mutilating his insides, he reached into a pocket and brought out two blood orbs. “You know, I lied about not wanting to win. Everyone wants to win!”

One of the orbs began to flow into the shape of a sword. Parv, swifter than expected, grabbed the sword and began slashing viciously at him. As Rythian fell away, in too much pain to scream, Parv held the other orb in front of him.

“Even Strife, so I’m going to make him happy,” he said. “Parvoir, motherfuckers!”

And then, he was gone. Not teleported, but with great speed and great blood cost.

All Rythian could do was to curse this forsaken world, and to wonder if Nilesy and Lomadia’s plan had worked. It almost made him smile, despite the pain.

* * *

 

 Every time we died and came back, our bodies were different.

 

We were different.

 

Slight imperfections. A blemish on the skin that wasn’t there before, a slightly different shade of red for the hair. I was meticulous in my records, that’s how I know. You were different, I was different, but we never noticed before.

 

Does it worry you?

 

Maybe the original you died, and you only think that your consciousness has carried on. Perhaps you are a newborn with the memories of a thousand other yous.

 

Does _that_ worry you?

 

I’ve killed worlds before. Why should I worry about me killing myself?

 

* * *

 


	7. hanged men

* * *

**In the moment between the sleep and the awake, he was not dreaming.**

**What does a man who has it all dream of? Or was going to have it all, or was filled with such overwhelming ambition that he didn’t even need to dream about what was a certainty.**

**He had never considered failure as a possibility.**

**Until now.**

* * *

Chaos was a drug.

To defy the natural order, to upend normal social conventions and to destroy people's expeditions - these were addicting. When you stopped caring, nothing matters and everything is yours to do as you please. It takes a strong mind to shake off the temptation, but what was the reward? More self delusions about caring?

Parvis, agent of chaos. That sounded like a very, very Parvy title, although a bit too pretentious for such a swell guy.

He hoped he was a swell guy.

No, he was really hoping that Strife would-

Would what? Accept him? Lay a teacherly hand on his shoulder and go, "Oh, Parvy, you are the master of mining and crafting!"

That would be amusing and rather entertaining, but Parv rather thought that he wanted something more sincere.

His flight was far faster than anything else in the world, possibly including Strife's teleporters. The world blurred around him, warping and twisting as the magic pushed and pulled him forwards. It almost seemed as if the world was rebuilding itself around him chunk by chunk.

The power of blood could never be understated. Blood was just a transportation system for stuff in the body, but what it symbolised was what was important to the magic. To mix your blood with the blood of another was to become blood brothers. To give it up was sacrifice, to spill it of another was dominance.

When William Strife had shut his eyes and made his first cut, giving the entirety of himself to Parv's altar, what did that mean? Strife claimed that he was just so forceful that he couldn't do things by halves, and then he had run away.

Scared.

Scared of giving himself up.

Wow, all this thinking had made the flight seem so much shorter! Of course, this time he wasn't tailing Rythian. The castle loomed up and out of the sea, the waves lapping at the ancient stone bricks. It was so much fun having your own castle.

Parv put away his orb and let himself fall to the ground. In his pack, he had sigils and runes to make him invulnerable to most damage and combined with his healing spell, he was practically invincible!

He was Parvincible!

While literally anyone else would probably have gotten tired of appending their name to everything, Parv was the one exception.

He hit the ground with a satisfying thud. That amount of blood/life essence to sustain that was a considerable amount, but he had so much in his network! It was thanks to the witches all locked up in a tiny tomb. Their blood would be drawn from their bodies by the runes he had carved into the walls, and then the witches would instinctively heal themselves. Even if they wanted to die, they couldn't!

Parv grabbed his communicator and logged onto the private channel #solutionsinchaos. Strife didn't seem to be on, so he sent about ten messages of varying "strife"s and then bragged about his achievements.

No response.

That was a bit odd. Strife was a bit anal about bringing his communicator with him and about responding to messages. He liked to know what was happening with the other people in this world, and maybe Strife was fanboying over people like Xephos and Honeydew at the same time.

Everything was just the way he had left it. Parv waved giddily at the Enderman head ceiling and skipped over to the blood altar. This altar was certainly not as messy as the one in Rav’s basement. Parv had _standards_!

He watched the blood swirl in the basin. Glorious, witchy blood. If he cared to listen, perhaps he could hear the tinkling of glass as the witches healed themselves. It was really quite relaxing, surrounded by such suffering.

Something was wrong.

Parv leaned over the altar, and watched the blood. He felt a bit uneasy, which was a strange and novel concept to him. He took out a sigil of divination and held it over the altar to see-

His blood bank wasn’t filling up very quickly. In fact, it was being very slow!

Did the witches die? If so, that was very naughty of them.

He hummed as he wandered over to one particular stone set in the wall, and then pried it open. The light from the castle began to shine into the dark, bloody room, to reveal-

where there should be about ten witches, bound, was-

* * *

**The darkness pressed against him with a cold, taunting presence. It dug at his skin and scratched at his face and if it could have laughed, it would have. He tried to lash out, to fight against the aggressor but there was nobody there.**

**One hand brushed against the wall. It was cold and slick. He tried to reach for it, to attempt to get up and stand up but he was too weak to move.**

**There was a loud smash, and he could feel the glass as it pierced… no. Liquid washed over his flesh, and somehow in the pain there was a soothing, warm comfort. He clung onto the feeling, almost sobbing in relief.**

**It was soon gone. Healing potions don’t last that long, anyway. He looked up to see the dim glow of a redstone circuit attached to a dispenser, and even in his state he recognised it as a simple redstone clock, possibly designed to deliver potions of healing or regeneration every so often.**

**He tried to reach upwards for the soft red light, but his strength was rapidly failing. How long had this been going for?**

**He remembered… no, he didn’t. Time was fluid here. Heh, just like the blood.**

**The wall was cold and slick, and he couldn’t tell if it was covered with blood, or if it was him.**

* * *

For a moment, Parv just stared into the room, unable to comprehend what he saw. He began to tear at the other stones, tossing them aside haphazardly. He didn’t _care_ if he broke something, he didn’t _care_ if he was ruining his castle, he didn’t _care_ that-

“Strife!” It was half choked, half screamed.

In his bloodied suit, blond hair dark with blood and glasses knocked askew, William Strife lay on the floor of Parv’s blood sacrifice room. He groaned, his barely open eyes dilating in the sudden light. His skin was marred by cuts and splashes of blood and bits of glass. As Parv watched in horror, the dispenser above Strife clicked and dropped a red potion directly onto Strife. The cuts began to close up, but other cuts replaced them.

This shouldn’t have been possible. The Well of Suffering could not take from people, only the _lower_ life forms - but the fact was that Strife was being emptied into his blood network.

Parv climbed into the room and immediately began to feel the sting of the blood runes. He ignored those and grabbed his friend, trying to pick up him, to hold him, to drag him out of this place.

He nearly missed the sign next to the dispenser in his anguish.

“For the witches you have enslaved and for protecting those who seek to cage magic, in the name of Rythian Enderborn, we have enacted justice.”

He knew who did this. Parv began to laugh, in spite of the cuts, in spite of the weariness, in spite of his friend dying in his arms-

Oh, he knew who were going to get a heavy helping of chaos!

* * *

The little hut in the forest was full of witches. They were lying on hastily cleared spots with blankets draped over them, sipping hot drinks and sobbing in quiet relief. All of them were villagers, but that didn’t make the tragedy that had happened to them any worse. Nilesy was kneeling at one of the older witches’ side, listening to her rattling rasp as she pleaded with him. Lomadia, across the room stirring up some hot chocolate, couldn’t hear what they were saying. She watched as Nilesy nodded, took out his sword and slit the witch’s throat.

So many had wanted a quick death, and their hands were bloodier than they had been in a long time. Yet, their hands could never be as bloody as that of Parvis’. He had not been at his home, but still, they had to do _something_.

The bitter taste of regret still caught in her throat. It had been a difficult job, perverting the runes in that small, bloody room to cut and take from humans instead of anything else - and in the end, Strife had looked so vulnerable.

But, looking around at the relieved witches, Lomadia knew that she did not regret that bit.

Nilesy was outside now, burying the old witch. One of the witches who had asked for death had told them of the words to speak over a grave, to protect a witch through the coldness after death and to join the moon and the sun in their dance. Lomadia could hear Nilesy speaking the words now - he wished for them to be happy, to be safe and to be surrounded by cats who love them and are so soft and fluffy. She didn’t think that last part was ‘official’, but it was a nice thing to say.

On that note, Nilesy was probably experiencing cat deprivation.

She added the healing potion to the hot chocolate concoction and was just about to pour it into some mugs when she heard a commotion outside. Ever the unflappable, Lomadia finished pouring and handing out the drinks before excusing herself and walking outside.

Rythian was here, and he looked… absolutely fucking done. His clothes were all cut up, and Lomadia wasn’t that sure that all the blood was his.

“This world,” he said, “does not deserve to live.”

“What happened, man?” Nilesy asked.

“What happened? What happened?! _Parvis_ happened.” Rythian laughed bitterly. “And, oh, turns out that Ravs isn’t that clean himself.”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Lomadia said. “Come inside and have some hot chocolate, for goodness sake!”

Rythian turned and stared past Lomadia, at all the witches in the hut. “Look- I’m sorry, but it’s true. The first thing I saw was _Zoey_ ,” and his voice broke here, “as a _cyborg._ And then Sjin and Lalna are taking it on themselves to rule magic, and even you and Nilesy are more dangerous, more… and now Ravs is a fucking cannibal.”

“What? I never saw anything like that when I go to Cabertown!”

Rythian’s eyes were burning cyan now, and with tension in his voice he said, “I’ll take that hot chocolate now. And then, I’m going to kill Strife, and I’m going to kill Parvis, and Lalna and Sjin, and then who knows? Maybe I’ll kill the whole world while I’m at it!”

Oh.

Okay.

Lomadia would have facepalmed at the stupidity exhibited by all parties in this situation, including herself. However, she didn’t really want to get blasted with Enderfire by an angry wizard.

Yeah, they fucked up.

* * *

They say that the first sense to come to a sleeping person is the sense of hearing. Music calms the beast, tames the dog and wakes up the maiden. In these situations, it was probably a mournful lullaby sung soulfully by some dewy eyed princess as she picked at a lute.

In this case, Parvis was shredding angrily on a guitar.

Yeah, he fucked up. He preferred to think of it as “Parving” up because he didn’t regret messing with Rythian _at all_ , and the only thing to regret was now lying on a bed in front of him. Strife was going to be okay, but it was so _boring_ without him.

He wondered idly where the rest of Area 11 was. Oh, many a thought had been spared to them, mostly while playing - but the memories of that world were hazy and dark. He’d have liked to take Strife to that spa, though.

The savage shredding of the poor guitar slowly died out to be replaced with some shuffling. Parv gently placed down his baby and stood up to stretch his legs.

“Are you awake yet, Strife?” he said for the tenth time this hour.  “Do you know how cute you look while sleeping? I’d have never have expected it!”

Strife did not stir to this highly disturbing comment.

Parv had tried bargaining, pleading and scolding. Now it was time for the fourth stage of acceptance, his favourite: insulting. “Fuck you, Strife!”

At this comment, Strife turned his head but did not wake up.

“Fine! I’m just going to go on tons of adventures with Martyn, and then when you’ll wake up you’ll be like oh no where is Parv, and I’ll be doing lots of magic stuff and- just wake up, will you?!”

“No,” Strife said.

“Well, fine! I’m going to leave now and…” The realisation hit like a sudden crescendo. “Holy shit, Strife! You’re awake!”

Groaning, Strife pulled himself to a sitting position on his bed. He looked down at his clothes and grimaced. “Parv, why am I in your shirt?”

“Why would I have your clothes in my wardrobe? That would just be silly!”

Strife snorted at this. "With you, I wouldn't be surprised at anything. I look ridiculous in this." Parv didn't think so, but then that was the only thing in his wardrobe.

"I'm glad to see that you're okay," he said.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Strife turned to try and get out of the bed. He promptly stumbled onto the floor, and Parv practically leaped over to grab him.

As he reached for Strife's hand, Strife flinched and scrambled to get away from him. For a scant second, his green eyes were wide with fear and panic - before some sort of realisation happened.

His face contorted into a vicious expression, not unlike the one Rythian bore. "So, who did this to me?" he asked, voice worryingly light and casual.

"Look, Strife, you clearly still need to rest! Let the Parvinator take care of revenge for the moment!" Parv was trying to keep his own tone happy, but he was beginning to see that Strife was not okay.

"Tell. Me."

"Nilesy and Lomadia, though I think they're working with Rythian now - but don't go after them, Strife-"

Strife staggered to his feet and turned to Parv, a beatific smile spread across his face. "Oh, I think I'll do **more** than that," he said. " **I think I'll kill them, and make sure that _they can't come back._** "

And then he laughed.

Well, shit.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Private Channel #ridgedforherpleasure!>

<The time is: 12:10:25 pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ >

 

<ridgedog> oh man you are not going to believe what happened

<ridgedog> this is hilarious

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Are you sure about that

<ridgedog> nilesy and lomadia kidnapped strife

<ridgedog> they fucked with parvs little sacrifice room so that for a while parv was draining strifes life when doing his blood shit

<ridgedog> isn't that ironic or what

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Not really

<ridgedog> geez go get a better sense of humor

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Only when you get some better information and learn what irony is

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > I'm not interested in Strife

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > And my interest in you wears thin

<ridgedog> if this is going to pan out the way i think it will i think youll soon be

 

<KirinDave> Hello, gentlemen.

 

<ridgedog> what are you doing here this is a private chat!  
<KirinDave> Yes, and you’ve hidden it very well.

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > So you’re the God of this world

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Pleased to meet you

<KirinDave> Can’t say the same for you, though.

<KirinDave has silenced ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟  !>

<KirinDave> In cahoots with someone from another world, are we, Ridgedog?

<ridgedog> whatever would give you that impression

<ridgedog> i know you can’t do anything to me because i’m just a part of this world as you are

<KirinDave> Yes, but I can make your life a living hell.

<KirinDave> I guess I’ll be having a bit of fun for a bit, then?

<ridgedog> oh crap

 

<ridgedog has fallen from a great height!>

 

<ridgedog> help

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Now this is funny

<ridgedog> screw you

 

<ridgedog has drowned!>

 

<ridgedog has died while trying to escape KirinDave!>

 

<ridgedog has burned to death!>

 

<KirinDave> That was oddly satisfying.

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > What are you going to do now

<KirinDave> This is my world.

<KirinDave> And now I've found you.

<ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟ > Can't touch me though

<KirinDave> We'll see about that.

<KirinDave has banned ą͢͡n͡o̷̡ń̵̸̴͝y̷̨̧m̡où̶̶s̷͞͏͟  from the chat!>

* * *

 

When a world is born, there is a small chance that one of the people native to that world will undergo apotheosis. They are charged with the world's protection, and although they remain human in their foibles and physicality, they are granted great powers.

 

Outside of their own worlds, their power is reduced. They become like us, almost. If their world is destroyed, this is a certainty.

 

If they destroy their own world, then we offer them a job.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KirinDave: As for you...
> 
> KirinDave: Oh, I'm not a cruel god. Not like what Ridgedog was.
> 
> KirinDave: I'll let you peek into the chat with my account.
> 
> KirinDave: I see you watching. :)


	8. the strength to spin the wheel

* * *

 

At the Tower, entangled in strange machinery, Strife was in a dark frenzy.

There was no sense of the usual exasperated joviality or the professionalism that Strife usually held. There was pure anger seething in his eyes and a growl in his voice, and he clenched his tools like weapons as he carried on his work. The methodical way he put things together was replaced with a strange ordered chaos. Mistakes were made, but it seemed that Strife no longer cared.

Parv loved it.

But, despite this brilliant, destructive corruption - it wasn't right. Parv was supposed to be the chaotic one, and Will would solve his problems! It was the ultimate partnership.

That was the deal.

That had _always_  been the deal.

After Strife had woken up, he had said that he needed to get back to the Solution Towers. His jetpack was back there, so Parv had to lend Strife a blood orb imbued with the spell of flight. Of course, Parv just had to follow his friend, to make sure he was okay.

What Strife was creating was, even to the untrained eye, deadly and dangerous. The first thing he had gone for was a wicked, bloody cleaver- the Beheading Blade. When asked why, Strife merely smiled in wicked contemplation.

What he was making now, Parv had no idea. "Strife! Whatcha doing!"

Strife did not turn away from his work. "Insurance," he said.

"Look," Parv said, deathly serious, "you're- you're turning into me! More Parviness is always good, but I like you as _you_!"

And here, Strife stopped. He stood up, wires trailing from his hands, but he did not face Parv. "And what if me as me doesn't get the job done, huh? What if I don't succeed?"

"You will, because you're William Strife!" Parv burst out. "You don't need to be Parvy!"

Again, a quiet giggle. "Well! Want to know what I'm making?"

A few minutes later, Parv was out the door.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! A goldmine of information!>

<The time is: 3:41:12 pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: KirinDave>

 

<Xephos> Everyone stop what youre doing this is important!

<Sips_> yeah you're supposed to be here helping the cocaine effort what can be more important than that

<Xephos> Oh,  I don't know, the continued existence of the world?

<Sips_> get your dumb butt over here you big babby

<Xephos> sigh

<Honeydew> you dont have to type sigh out you know

<Xephos> What are you doing on your walkie talkie?! Go back to planning!

<Honeydew> the lalnas and the zoeys are going on about weird stuff and my tiny dwarfy brain doesnt understand

<Honeydew> what am i supposed to do

<Xephos> I dunno, use your dwarven intuition!

<Sips_> stop babbling and get on with it

<Sips_> whats this about the end of the world

<Rythian> I wouldn't call it the end of the world

 

<Rythian> just the end of your world.

<Xephos> When did you get an account?!

<Rythian> Thought you could conspire against me?

<Xephos> uh yes

<Rythian> Heh.

<Rythian has logged out!>

<Xephos> fuck

<Sips_> come on rythians barely a threat he never even did anything in the old world

<Sips_> even at his angstiest

<Sips_> me and sjin blew up a whole world

<Xephos> ...

<Xephos> We have reason to believe he's serious this time

<W_Strife> and if he's not serious, I certainly am.

 

<Xephos> Strife where have you been

<W_Strife> just being tortured by Rythian's lackeys.

<Xephos> wat

<W_Strife> rest assured, I won't let him destroy the world

<Xephos> phew

<W_Strife> I'll end the world myself before it gets to that. =)

<W_Strife has logged out!>

 

<Xephos> okay youre joking right.

<Sips_> oh man you are in so much shit right now lol

<Xephos> Thanks for the vote of confidence

 

<inthelittlewood has logged on!>

<inthelittlewood> inthelittlewood here!

<inthelittlewood> and why is the forest on fire? >.<

<FireDragon04 has logged on!>

<FireDragon04> what’s going on? we were just building something when we heard an explosion

<Strippin has logged on!>

<BebopVox has logged on!>

<Benjamin_Disco has logged on!>

<Everybody on the whole server has logged on!>

 

<Xephos has logged off!>

* * *

Making a noise that could most accurately be described as a cross between a sigh and a groan, Xephos shut his space decorated communicator and looked up to find that all three Lalnas had their shirts off. This was far more of Lalna then he had ever wanted to see.

“What,” he stated.

They were inspecting each other all over. One of the Lalnas looked up and said, “We’re testing a theory!”

“What kind of theory would need you to be half naked?!” Despite great misgivings, Xephos approached the trio. Nano and Sjin were also looking at the naked Lalnas, rather appreciatively he thought.

Another Lalna, who must have been Duncan due to his outrageous shoelaces, looked up at him and grinned. “We don’t think we’re, like, cloned by a single hair of the original Lalna’s head. We’re working on the theory that the original Lalna split into the three of us after we planted the nuke in Rythian’s base.”

“We have the same scars and memories leading up to that, and then we diverge!” said another Lalna.

“And how is that helpful?” Xephos asked.

All three Lalnas shrugged. “But we think that we diverged when we moved from that world to the next - we ended up in different worlds. I was in Chaosville with Sjin, Duncan met up with Nanosounds at his castle and Livid was always with you guys.”

Livid coughed. “And Rythian went a bit nuts when he came from the last world, didn’t he?”

“He’s not nuts,” Zoeya said as she emerged from the stairs. Teep, Zoey and Fiona followed after, and Xephos rather thought that they had been performing a similar experiment. “Something happened to him between the worlds. Teep and I remember this really freezing cold during the transition, almost like we were respawning!”

Teep nodded as he chewed on a piece of steak he pilfered from Duncan and Nano’s chest.

“Do you remember anything like that when you came over, guys?”

God, it had been so long.

“Kind of?” Honeydew said. Xephos looked at him in surprise, and Honeydew huffed. “But we were in a spaceship at the time, and it’s bloody cold in a spaceship!”

“So were we!” Zoey gestured at herself and Fiona. “We also came here in a spaceship - but we think people who come here in special spaceships don’t get what you’re talking about.”

Nano raised her hand. “B-but, Duncan, we went to the Nether to come here, and remember- it got really cold when we went through the Nether portal!”

“Yeah!”

“Before you talk about this more, can you _please_ put your shirts back on?” When the Lalnas began to protest, Xephos shot them all a death glare. “So you think you know when Rythian got… corrupted? But do you know _how_ you’re going to deal with him?”

This elicited a nervous silence. “We’ve been talking about it. We can’t think of anything but…” Zoeya trailed off, her eyes downcast.

“We’re going to have to kill him,” Zoey said. “We- we need more time, so if we can force him to respawn, and then restrain him so that he doesn’t do any more damage…”

“How can we kill him? He has the strongest armour of that world! And somehow, it’s still working!” Coffee was almost yelling.

“We’ll work on that,” Zoeya said. “But- neither of us should do it, because he’s just going to get madder at the sight of us.”

“You do that, I need to do a thing.” Xephos turned and walked out of PandaLabs.

This was a nice place, trees and farms and glistening water. Looking around to make sure nobody was focused on him, Xephos opened his communicator.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Private Channel #damnowls!>

<The time is: 4:30:32 pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: KirinDave>

 

<Lomadia> what do you want

<Xephos> Didnt you see what I said on the main chat?

<Xephos> I want to make sure you’re okay

<Lomadia> uh

<Lomadia> hold on to that thought

<Lomadia> me and nilesy have found ourselves working with rythian

<Xephos> Oh.

<Lomadia> we were just trying to strike at parv

<Lomadia> the things he did to those witches

<Xephos> Get out of there!

<Xephos> You do know Rythian’s planning on destroying the world right

<Lomadia> it’s hard to ignore when you’re right next to him!

<Xephos> I just want you to be safe

<Lomadia> well nope

<Lomadia> but

<Lomadia> you’re going to take him down right?

<Xephos> yeah

<Lomadia> i’ll see what me and nilesy can do

<Lomadia> we aren’t that keen on the whole apocalypse thing

<Xephos> That would be a great help

<Xephos> Lom…

<Lomadia> yeah yeah i know be safe

<Lomadia> gotta go

* * *

Someone was shouting, disturbing the equally loud arguing from within Panda Labs. Xephos looked up and saw someone flying closer, zooming at a speed even the Dwarven Jetpack could not compare with.

Parv almost crashed into Xephos in his haste to land. Luckily, he only crashed next to him, and Xephos watched in amazement as Parv jumped up and dusted himself off, not worse for wear. "I saw in the chat that you were all here!" he said. He didn't look like his usual beaming self, instead rather rumpled and tired. His eyes shone with an odd determination, though.

Xephos eyed him up and down. "What do you want?" he snapped rather angrily.

Parv did not answer. Instead, he ran into PandaLabs, and before people could turn to him, said very loudly: "Strife has a nuke! And he's going to blow the world up if he can't kill Rythian, Lomadia and Nilesy!"

Everyone fell silent.

"Oh, is it something I said?" Parv did not sound sorry at all. "I thought you should know this because you're going to save the world from Rythian, right? Now, you have to save it from Strife, too! You have a plan, right?!"

Xephos thought of a wide plethora of swear words, some not even native to this planet. This day could not get any better.

* * *

 

Will we ever go back to that first world?

 

I've tried to remake it for you, but every time it comes out wrong. Corrupted. So I have to destroy it.

 

But when a god protects that world, I find that I can't touch it. So I have to make do with what I have, and what I have is a lot.

 

Here, I have so much.

 

I have the one thing that gives me the strength to do the impossible. To surmount the improbabilities and to do what I should not.

 

Sleep, my friend.

 

I will dream for you.

 

* * *

 


	9. justice for the lost and lonely

* * *

 

The Catalytic Lens is an artifact of the old world. It was used to destroy large areas, caking them in great flames and fury - devastation as an art form.  The items Rythian had on him seemed to work despite their magic not being supported by this world. He did not care to wonder why.

All he cared about was that it worked.

He couldn’t create from that magic, but that was just a minor setback, He had a bit of knowledge about other kinds of magic that worked here, and of course, he had his connection to the End. This connection was stronger here, if not strangely artificial.

A great dark tower loomed in front of him. In a more sandswept world, perhaps legends would be told of its corporate glory. With bloody red brick mixed with darkened basalt, it almost seemed more like the home of an evil overlord.

A corporate evil overlord, to be exact.

The tower sat upon a large raised square of land, surrounded by a series of squat, ugly boxes. Rythian turned his eye to what looked like a glass greenhouse. Idly, carefully, Rythian held out the Lens and murmured.

What was left was a great, smoking crater, filled with twisted metal.

“Holy shit!" From the broom he was sharing with Lomadia, Nilesy swivelled around to face Rythian. One of his hands was clamped around Lomadia, the other grabbing onto his witchy hat as it flapped in the wind. "Did you really need to use that?!"

In mute response, Rythian aimed the Lens at a series of tanks, which burst apart in a great explosion.

As he hung in the air, wondering what to do next, a ball of light shot past him. Rythian turned and saw a series of strange guns affixed to the tower, shooting crackling balls of electricity. He enderported away with ease and watched as Lomadia and Nilesy clumsily climbed upwards, as Nilesy lost his grip and fell away from the broom.

From the great red doors at the base of the tower, a figure stepped out and began to rise. It spiralled upwards until it was eye level with Rythian, above the field of glimmering orbs, above it all. He supposed they made quite a pair - Rythian in his terrible Red Matter armour which drunk the sunlight, Strife in glowing purple that caught the rays instead.

Neither of them spoke, not even as both drew their blades.

There were no need for words.

* * *

So this was a blast, both metaphorically and literally.

When cats fell, they landed on their feet and started licking themselves as if nothing had happened. When Nilesy fell, he would probably end up as a lumpy mass of meat which something else would end up licking.

He looked up and saw that Lomadia had wrestled control of her broom. Unfortunately, she was too far away to save him, and she was above the bouncing golden balls of death. Above her, to the drumbeat of explosions, two fuzzy figures clashed.

Shit, his glasses were slipping off his face. Nilesy grabbed at them and hung on, as if magically they would lift him up. He frantically checked through his inventory for anything that would help and found absolutely nothing. Zip! Nada!

He wasn't the type of person to blindly accept his fate. Panicking, flailing, Nilesy attempted to do what a cat would do and flip over onto his front. As he watched the ground get closer and closer, he closed his eyes-

And did not die.

He was slowing down. Something had grabbed him by his shirt collar and was slowly lowering him. As his feet touched the sweet, sweet earth, Nilesy looked up to thank his saviour.

His face was met with a whole lot of beard.

The short fat face of one Honeydew was grinning down at him. "Aren't you glad dwarves can fly?" When Nilesy's feet touched the ground, Honeydew dropped him roughly and then zoomed off.

Nilesy waved, and then immediately felt like an idiot. He shoved his glasses back on his face and looked around at the destruction that was once Strife's stuff. Near a bunch of rubble was Zoey - but not the Zoey he had seen recently. This Zoey looked more like the one he remembered, with a cyborg arm and a fashionable green shirt!

"Zoeya!" Nilesy clambered over to her, tripping over bits of upturned rock.

"Nilesy! Do you know what the boob is going on?!" Zoeya gestured up at the action above. "Do you know the plan?"

"What plan?!" Nilesy's voice may have gone up a few octaves, but he was definitely not panicking.

Zoeya, obviously trying her hardest to sound calm, quickly explained. She and a few other people were going to try and distract Strife, and Xephos's crew would try to lure Rythian away. And then they had to kill both of them. And then grab them at their respawn points.

"Wait, why are we killing Strife? I get Rythian, yeah, but the fuck?!"

Zoeya looked a bit pained, probably because of Rythian. "He- Parv told us something bad happened to him, and now he has a nuke."

Something bad.

Oh.

Whoops.

Nilesy laughed a bit nervously. "Yeah, about that, uh... Never mind that! How're you gonna grab their attention?" A thousand thoughts were racing through his head, most of which consisted of a lot of self flagellation. "They're in the fucking sky!"

Zoeya looked up, and Nilesy followed her gaze to see a sight not many have seen - a flying dwarf. Honeydew was attempting to dodge the golden balls of doom coming from Strife's tower, as well as the occasional stray Ender spell. Nano and Lalna were right behind him and were being a bit more graceful than the dwarf. And- hang on, running into the tower, was that another Lalna?

Yeah, it was! And apparently, he couldn't get into the tower.

Another question occurred to Nilesy. "Why aren't you on the Rythian crew? He's pretty mad at you, you'd be a great distraction!"

Zoeya was just about to respond when they were interrupted by a loud crash.

The two of them looked up to see the top of the Solution Tower engulfed in flame. Red and black bricks were tumbling down in gigantic chunks with wires and metal enmeshed in the chaos. More explosions could be heard, and some bits of the building were being shot out at terrifying speeds.

Zoeya grabbed Nilesy's hand, and they ran. "Xephos thought that I'd enrage him even more," she said.

"You want him to be enraged! That's the whole point!"

Nilesy's foot caught a bit of debris, and he stumbled. Zoeya turned around, trying to help him up- but Nilesy could see, behind Zoeya, a gigantic bit of building heading straight for her. Grunting, he stood up and barrelled into her.

His last thought was of regret, and then there was the bitter cold.

* * *

Zoeya couldn't help but gasp as Nilesy was crushed. She backed away from the impact and watched as her friend immediately burst into thousands of glittering squares.

At least he'd be safe now, waking up at home. She certainly wasn't! A quick glance around, and Zoeya ran.

Was the explosion a nuke? She didn't think so - she knew _exactly_ what a nuke was like. The nuke must be somewhere else in the tower. She wasn't keen on disarming it, but if she had to-

Something growled in her ear. Teep was standing next to her, his bow and arrow at the ready. With a toss of his head, he motioned at his back.

"You want me to ride you?" Teep was a pretty proud dinosaur, and he wouldn't let himself stoop to the level of mere animals. He nodded vigorously, and angled his back so that Zoeya could get on easily. She had only just settled on, feeling his warm scales under her hands - when they were off!

"Teep! We need to get to the door to that big tower!"

Teep avoided the falling hazards with ease, being a lot faster than a human. He did get hit with a few bricks, but he was a pretty sturdy dinosaur. When they got to the door, Zoeya jumped off.

Livid was still fiddling with the doors. The doorway had sheltered him, but Zoeya still had to make her way over a lot of debris to get to him. "Need help?" she said.

"I just need a few more minutes!" The world shook from another explosion. Zoeya knelt down next to Livid, and for a few very tense minutes, they fiddled with wires and broke bricks to get at said wires. Teep stood guard, although what he was guarding them from was unclear.

Finally, the doors slammed open with a heavy clunk. Zoeya, Teep and Livid staggered in and just stood there, gasping for breath. Zoeya took the moment to look around at the machines behind glass walls, at the other floors visible through glass floors and at the general decor. Strife seemed to be a pretty good interior designer, but beige and black were such boring colours!

At the back of the room, there were a few garishly purple portals, labelled with their destinations.

"Where do you wanna go?" Livid said, his voice breathless.

She stared at the sign indicating the portal to the nuclear room, before shaking her head and heading to the top floor.

"But you're not supposed to be up there!" Livid didn't make any moves to stop her, and so Zoeya and Teep emerged into daylight. The top of the tower was gone, twisted metal and broken bricks making up a brand new balcony - but the portal still stood. Blinking away the sun, Zoeya scanned the skies.

Right above her, the two combatants were just hanging in the air. If she concentrated, she could just barely make out what they were saying.

"I have an ace up my sleeve," Strife said. He sounded smug, but even from below, Zoeya could see where Rythian had ripped away bits of his armour. It was probably a miracle that he could still fly.

Rythian said something indistinct, or maybe Zoeya was stopping herself from hearing him properly. His cape was ragged and his armour was also damaged badly.

Strife laughed, or maybe it was a giggle. "If you kill me, this bomb explodes! If you destroy all of my tower, everything goes!"

"Fuck you!" said Rythian, and Zoeya knew that it was time to act.

She whispered to Teep, trying to comfort him and to encourage him. She didn't want to use him like this, but if this would save the world, then it was worth it. Teep nodded, and with his readied weapon...

he let a single arrow fly.

It hit Rythian on his arm. He was armoured there, but that was the point. He turned, and Zoeya fought the urge to turn away.

She could imagine him whispering her name, as he hovered, paralysed. The moment was broken when Strife struck at him, and Zoeya screamed as Rythian was knocked back. It didn't seem to be a fatal hit, thankfully. With a savagery she had never seen before, Rythian spun around and with his blade, stabbed Strife multiple times.

It- it should have worked! But- he hadn't come straight at her, not like he did when they first entered this world...

Lost in her thoughts and distracted by the fight, Zoeya did not notice the third person to step through the portal. She did notice when Teep growled, so she turned to see Parvis standing there.

"Can you do that again?"

Teep looked at Zoeya, tilting his head in that questioning way. With a heavy heart, she nodded.

"Shoot Will," Parv said, and his voice was absent of his usual maniac cheer.

The arrow flew.

It found its target.

* * *

William Strife always put so much of himself into everything he did. Now, revenge consumed him. With savage delight, he tore into Rythian, not even caring about the abuse being done to his body by the mage.

Magic took, and magic took, and magic took, and what it gave was so fucking little! This was not just a battle between two men, it was a war between technology and magic - and if he did this right, this could be the final one.

Perhaps he was beyond reason. Perhaps he did not consider that Parv, his friend, was a mage - or maybe he felt so betrayed that he just didn't care. Both were correct, and both were wrong.

He felt so giddy with adrenaline that when the arrow hit him, he almost didn't notice. Strife instinctively looked and saw-

Parv had run away.

And there he was. What could he do, though? He wasn't a great blood mage, no matter how he fooled himself!

_(never mind that strife was ignoring the available evidence)_

Strife broke away from the embrace of death and drifted closer. There was Parv, and there was a girl and there was a dinosaur with a bow. Parv was saying something, something about-

"Strife! Strife! I'm going to fuck with your bomb!"

How could he stop Rythian without that?! Without thinking, Strife fell into a dive and aimed straight for Parv-

who had just gone through the portal. Growling to himself, Strife landed and charged through.

Parv was waiting for him on the other side. He winked, him with his stupid beard and dark eyes, and vanished through another portal. Of course, Strife followed- he didn't stop to wonder why Rythian did not follow- and then, there they were, in the basement of the Solution Tower. Surrounded by tanks pumping redstone coolant, gauges and monitors and wires taking up the entire wall, this was where all the power came from for the almighty tower.

This was also where Strife had put his dark creation. Parv was looking at it now with detached interest. "How do you disarm this thing?" he asked.

Strife scoffed. "Like I would tell you. Why are you here? You ran away!" And that had stung so much, Parv had always stood by him, Parv was worse than him and

Parv shrugged. "I like living! Look, I'm sorry about what happened to you, and we can make it better! Just disarm the nuke, and we can go back to my place and catch witches and make a blood cult and things will be back the way they were, right, Will?"

He thought about it. "I don't think so, Parvis." If Parv was too distracted talking, he could lunge for the nuke.

"But- you're not good at this chaos stuff. There still needs to be a world after you mess it up! Let me be the villain, and you can go back to being my hero, please?" This was the most sincere Strife had ever heard Parv be.

Didn't change his mind, though. He moved, ready to grab the bomb, to activate it or just to keep it with him he did not know.

In a single, swift movement, Parv tackled him to the floor and drew him into an embrace. "I- I'm sorry, Strife," he said. He began fiddling with Strife's armour, tossing the singed metal to the side haphazardly.

"Why are you sorry?" He could still move. He could activate his jetpack and shake Parv off, but he couldn't bring himself to do this.

"I'm not meant to solve things."

And Parv took out his dagger, and he thrust it into William Strife's heart.

* * *

He was hollow and empty.

Perhaps one would have expected the fearsome avenging endermage to be filled with an unearthly rage, but that had been spent long ago. He was full of regret, and especially for her. He had tried to fight the thoughts away, but they lingered.

He should have talked to her. He should have tried to understand why, but he had been blinded by a consuming, cold rage, unlike anything he had ever felt.

Even with Lalna and Sjin.

The rage was gone now, no matter how he blustered or screamed. Now, there was the far more human emotion of mourning. He mourned what his friends had become, what his friends were becoming.  He mourned even now, seeing that Zoeya had cut the wire to the teleporter, that she stood there trying not to look at him. He knew- she saw in him a monster.

If she expected a monster, perhaps he should be one. He took a step forward, but he took no pleasure in seeing her step back.

Teep, who had shot him, another backstabber - he growled and moved to stand in front of Zoeya. She stopped him with a wave, and reluctantly the dinosaur moved back.

"Stop this, please," she said so very softly.

How he would love to, but something dark within him refused. Something dark and deep and artificial, and perhaps it was not him. It probably was, though.

"Rythian, don't- don't you remember? I came back for you! After I left you, I was so sorry, I /am/ so sorry..." She was babbling now.

It broke his heart, but yet he could not answer.

"Please."

"I can't," someone said.

She was crying. "Finish it, please," she said. "Finish it, then."

Rythian hesitated, and in that moment, he began to wonder who she was directing that at. He was answered when the blade sunk into his neck, and he fell into the dark cold with a sense of relief.

Although, as he died, he could have sworn that he saw two Zoeys and a brown haired girl with a sword.

* * *

For a long while, Parv stayed there with Strife's body in his arms, accompanied only by the nuke. He watched as the body faded into red-black squares, millions of them fluttering into the nothingness like butterflies. It was oddly beautiful.

He realised he was humming. A few lines from Bosozuku Symphonic. He supposed it fit, but nothing did in this chaotic world.

Had Strife slept since he went back to his tower? Probably not. There was still that part of the plan, but what could Strife do at the castle?

The nuke was here, and it didn't look like it was going to explode. He prodded it with his foot and it spectacularly failed to do anything. A dumb idea, but Parv had never been known for good ones.

His flight back to his castle seemed to take no time at all, oddly. It should have taken an infinity.

When he saw Strife, he was going to... what? Give him a harsh talking to? Hug him and sob in relief? He didn't know.

He really didn't know what to do when he entered the room and saw no signs of Strife.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! Let your potential soar!>

<The time is: 2:42:32 pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: KirinDave>

 

<Xephos> Me and Honeydew checked where Rythian first came into the world and the general respawn point, but he's not there

<Lomadia> where the hell could he have gone?

<Nilesy_> There is a general lack of screaming and fire around!

<Zoeya> u ok nilesy?

<Nilesy_> Feeling peachy

<Nilesy_> respawning took longer than expected though which was kinda odd

<LividCoffee> i also checked anywhere he could have slept

<acparvis> guys I looked everywhere for strife and I can't find him

<LividCoffee> wat

<Nilesy_> the fuck?

<Xephos>  Are you guys telling me we've lost Rythian and Strife?!

* * *

Xephos frowned and set the switches to OFF.

* * *

 


	10. the two riding

* * *

 

Cold.

He felt ice pressing against, permeating his skin. This was the absolute cold of death and all things dark and dreary.

He should have respawned by now, shouldn't he?

He waited quite patiently for a little while, but it didn't seem like it was going to end. Disregarding the cold and how he seemed to be frozen into an uncomfortable position, his main concern was how bored he was getting.

He tried to remember his name and his last memory. It was so very fuzzy, and his memories seemed to conflict-

Yes. He was Rythian Enderborn, and he had just been about to walk to another world. Or was he killed? Fuck, it didn't really seem to matter. He just wanted to be alive, godammit!

Wait, could he open his eyes? He could feel his eyelids, and they were shut.

He opened them and instantly winced at the bright light. It was fuzzy and blue, but god was that bright! After blinking a few times and getting used to it, he opened his eyes to see a bunch of blurry shapes - a bunch of tallish blue shapes. If he focused anymore, perhaps he could see darker shapes in those blue shapes.

He grit his teeth. Death wasn't supposed to be like this! Or- was this the final death? What kind of afterlife just had you stuck in one position?

The boring kind. But he could move his mouth, and he could blink, and maybe...

A few minutes later, to the sound of shattering, the great mage Rythian Enderborn fell very gracefully onto the floor. He lay there for a few moments, staring at some stupidly bright ceiling lights and wondering just where the hell he was.

He got up and looked around.

The blue shapes were tubes, and the dark shapes were people. This unnerved Rythian quite a lot, considering that he had just been one of those people. He looked back at his own tube, at the ice on the floor and felt proud that he had smashed through the glass.

And then he realised that the glass door was open, and he had just smashed through ice. This was still an achievement, but not as much as smashing your way through glass like an Iron Golem. He felt cheated!

The people in the tubes looked very familiar. In fact, he knew all these people to an extent. Here was Lalna, looking quite gormless. There was Martyn, skin ice blue from the cold.

There was Zoeya.

Her tube was not open. Rythian looked all over, at all the buttons and the wires, but he couldn't find a way to release her. He didn't want to press the wrong button and to kill her by mistake. She would not be very happy about that.

She didn't seem awake, anyway. This might have been a callous thought to think, but Rythian was glad that she wasn't going through the same torturous boredom he had just undergone. He vowed to be back, anyway.

He was beginning to have a bit of a hypothesis about this place.

All the way at the end, one other tube seemed to have its door open. Rythian walked over there and stood in front of it. He didn't quite recognise the person inside-

Except he did. In the memories where he was killed, this person was apparently... an enemy? Those memories were a whole lot fuzzier than the others, and seemed to not be entirely his own. That was a weird thing to think, but Rythian was pretty sure he was right.

This person was a man with blond hair and goatee, in a red shirt and black waistcoat. Rythian quietly sent a thanks to Notch that whatever creepy science facility they were all in, at least they were all clothed.

This person was also blinking.

Should he help? Even if this guy was an enemy, he would probably be as disorientated as Rythian was. With a shrug, Rythian began to attack the ice with his hands. His heat plus the heat from outside was quickly making the ice melt, and in a few short moments, the man had fallen out of the tank, coughing.

Rythian waited for him to finish. "You okay, man?"

The man gave him an odd look.

"Yeah, I kinda remember us fighting and a whole lot of crap happening, but I- don't worry, I'm just as confused as you are. I came out of that tank over there." Rythian gestured behind him, jabbing at the open tank.

The man finally spoke. "So, you're not going to try and kill me?"

"Why would I? Okay, I know I did - but, see, I think I wasn't quite myself back then, so I'm sorry for trying to kill you. I don't even remember your name!"

"Alright. Truce, then? Even if you apparently don't remember." The man got to his feet a bit unsteadily. He looked up at Rythian and offered his hand, although his face was still etched with confusion.

Rythian took it, shook it and let go quickly. "Truce. So, mind telling me who you are?"

"I did kinda tell you when we first started fighting, but sure. William Strife. I know who you are, don't worry." Strife was looking around now.

Rythian laughed wryly. "Any idea where we are? I thought I was dead and just about to respawn."

"Me too, actually. Do you remember how you died?" The wires connecting the console to the tank had caught Strife's interest, and he was examining it intently.

"On one hand, I just walked into a portal meant to take me to another world. On the other hand, I think Zoey killed me. Not that I can blame her." And really from what he could remember, he couldn't. Although that could just be a weird disconnect from the reality of the situation. Man, this was so weird, he just couldn't help but be bemused,

"My b- my friend, Parv. He killed me to stop me from detonating a nuke. On retrospect, I did deserve that." Strife also seemed to have the same disorientated disconnect. "You probably don't remember, but some of your friends did torture me in your name."

"Oh god," Rythian said. He meant it. "I'm sorry about that."

"Nah, it's fine. It's not fine, but I can't blame you now. Gotta move with the times, you know? Wake up in a test tube, can't dwell too much on the past." Strife smiled, and Rythian hoped that it was genuine.

The tubes and the wires offered no answers, and neither did the featureless blank ceilings and floors. The two men walked past the rows of the dreaming dead, frozen in eternity.

Strife stopped at one tube containing a dark haired man in a dark shirt, a white triangle containing the number 11 emblazoned on his chest. Even in sleep, he bore a manic grin on his face. Strife's expression was soft, almost tender, as he placed a hand on the cold glass.

"Is that Parv?" Rythian had heard of the band members of Area 11, but he hadn't dealt with them in person. At least, not in his normal memories.

"That's him. What an idiot."

They continued walking, continued talking to fill in the gaps in Rythian's memory as well as to fill in the empty silence all around. Rythian spoke of the old world, of quiet days with Zoeya and Teep and the others - and yes, of the time when Zoeya ran from him and the darkness in his soul. But, just 'resetting' him to that time wouldn't have made him want to hurt Zoeya!

Nothing would.

Strife talked about arriving in a world beset by chaos, and his intentions to solve the world's problems - for a price, of course. He talked about Parv, the maniac idiot who screwed up yet had brilliant ideas, whose descent into blood magic was both frightening and adorable.

And he talked of the fight. It was really just for money, for having the Magic Police on his side although really, they couldn't even police their own noses if it wasn't on their face. With a deadpan voice, he stumbled over being stuffed under Parv's blood altar by the witches, taking revenge for their own.

Rythian was very apologetic. It didn't really excuse the nuke, though.

At the end of the room, at the edge of the array was a doorway. It opened up to more bright lights set above a gleaming white corridor, sterile and clean and empty. There were a great many locked doors under with ominous signs, looming with labels like "ANIMAL SPLICING", "EXTRADIMENSIONAL HAZARDS" and "COFFEE ROOM". Rythian shuddered to think of what horrors lay in that last one.

"Don't you think their decor's a bit cliche? At Strife Solutions, we may be an evil money grabbing company but at least we have style." Strife pointed at a decaying pot plant, neglected in the larger scheme of things. "Just look at that! Shameful!"

Rythian just wasn't a fan of the whole sterile science thing. "I wouldn't know, I mean, my style is more evil wizard although I'm _not_ an evil wizard, I just used to live in an ominous black castle."

"See, that's stylish. This place is just - eurgh - boring."

Rythian was about to make another quip when he was interrupted. "Did you see that?" He pointed at the end of the corridor, where he thought he saw some movement.

Strife began striding forward, saying as he did so, "We have company!" They broke into a fast walk and as they rounded the corner, they saw a villager in a white coat running towards them. The villager was also gabbling in its odd villager speak, something about an escapee?

"Shit, is that us?"

The alarms began to blare. Oddly enough, the villager completely ignored them as it ran past, and the last legible word it said seemed to be "cannibal". A faded memory came to Rythian, somehow involving Ravs - he pushed it away, deeming it both useless and impossible.

"Think we should make a break for it?" Strife asked.

"Where would we go?"

They continued walking in the direction the villager had run from, and came across an open door. The sign was covered in so many warnings and threats that it said nothing about what it actually was about.

Rythian walked in. Behind him, he heard Strife try to say something, splutter and then with a resigned groan, follow.

The room seemed to be split into two by a great glass wall, which if the sign was to be believed, was electrified and reinforced. There was a gap in the floor in front of the wall, and about ten cameras were pointed at it. About three signs said "DO NOT TAP THE GLASS."

In the cell, shaking and staring, was Lalna. Or, he looked exactly like Lalna, but deep in his eyes was a predatory intelligence that held no regard for anyone. "Welcome to my lair!" he said, and then he let out the most terrifying cliche laugh.

Rythian was not scared. "Really, Lalna, really?"

"It's not. Lalna, it's. LALNABLE." 'Lalnable' rushed at the glass and put his face right up to it, attempting to look as deranged as possible. "LALNABLE HECTOR."

"Good for you," said Strife. "You're the fifth Lalna I've seen today. No offence, but your crazy clone schtick isn't doing it for me."

Lalnable pouted. "Hey, just by making a scary face, I got that Testificate to pull the alarms! Give me a break, they don't let me use my wicked smarts here."

Rythian rolled his eyes. "Sure, sure, your wicked smarts. Do you even know what this place is? Strife and I woke up in some cold test tubes, know anything about that?"

"This is YogLabs!" Lalnable paused for effect, but there was none. With a sigh, he carried on. "You know, where all kinds of unethical experiments are carried out on all the permutations of Minecraftia? I used to work here, and then they said I was just too 'unstable' for them. As for your second question - you must be the Master Clones. If I kill you, you'll never respawn again!"

"Dude. You're stuck behind a wall," said Strife. He was standing back, arms crossed and absolutely not looking impressed at all.

"Not unless you let me out."

The silence that followed was one of shared looks of disbelief.

"Seriously? You just _told_ us that you'd kill us!" If a picture told a thousand words, Rythian's face said, 'are you fucking kidding me'.

Lalnable coughed. "Uh, I said IF I killed you. Damn, I'm out of practice manipulating people."

"Strife, let's go. He's pulling this out his ass."

As Rythian turned to leave, Lalnable shouted out behind him. "Wait! I'm telling the truth! I can tell you stuff, like about the cloning program and other stuff! Just let me out!"

Strife's voice sounded exaggeratedly intrigued as he spoke. "Oh? Why don't you tell us, and THEN we let you out. Deal?" He was looking at a console with more unintelligible buttons and knobs, his fingers brushing against some of the buttons.

"Fine!"

"Spill the beans," Strife commanded.

Lalnable huffed. "Okay, so what do you know about YogLabs?"

"Absolutely nothing. We just came out of some Popsicles!" Rythian wasn't quite sure if he wanted to humour the 'madman', but Strife looked like he was having fun.

"Okay, okay. YogLabs takes place in the center of the multiverse."

There was only one possible response to this, and Rythian said it. "WHAT."

"It's true! A long time ago, there wasn't a center of the universe, but then the head honcho decided to move things here because - well - anything that happens in the center of the universe happens in every other world, right?"

"Go on," said Strife. He did not look like he believed this crap.

"Yeah, so because we have a copy of a lot of people here, in every single world you're guaranteed at least one of those people. Sometimes you get multiple copies because they travel from world to world, and those copies can be slightly different - variations on a theme, like me." Lalnable took an exaggerated bow. "Some worlds don't get them because they're expecting someone to cross over. Very inconsistent!"

"But- we came from one of those worlds. And we died."

Lalnable shrugged. "Your respawning must have been interrupted. When you die, your memories, your consciousness is transferred to this central world, into the Master Clone, so that we can clone you -bymakinganddestroyingaworld- and send the clone back with your consciousness. Same thing with travelling between worlds. A back up, so that you don't ever get lost."

Endermages had pretty good hearing, and this room was quite quiet apart from Lalnable's rambling. "What was that you mumbled?!"

"Oh! Yeah, every time you respawn, we have to destroy one of our patented Clone worlds because it splits into multiple worlds, and then we grab the clone of you from there. So really, you're both mass murderers, like me."

Again, there was a silence.

"So can you let me out now?" Lalnable asked.

Strife turned to Rythian and grinned. "What do you think?"

"Nah," said Rythian.

The swearing and shouting as the two left the room was rather satisfying. Rythian laughed as he left, feeling that in some small, strange way, he had finally gotten his revenge on Lalna.

Of course, this was a different Lalna - and he was a different Rythian now. Did revenge really matter in this strange place?

Did anything?

The alarms eventually brought a crack team of elite villagers, who still shivered and blabbered inside their shiny black armours. Villagers did tend to be of the nervous persuasion, so they generally didn't question things if you just walked around like you owned the place.

Which, Rythian noticed, Strife did all the time.

They hurried away from the gathering crowd and into an intersection of even more corridors. Every direction looked the same, with the exception of such oddities like broken down robots and a bunch of villagers in labcoats gingerly fixing a wall.

Strife cleared his throat. "Where next?"

What did he want from this place, this land of twisted passages and twisted people? "We have to find who runs this place," Rythian said. "We have to get answers."

"In case you haven't noticed, we don't exactly know our way around. Do you think there'll be a sign saying 'Head Office, please direct all inquiries about unethical experiments here'?"

"Can't hurt to ask," Rythian said. "Next villager we talk to, we get answers, okay?"

They chose a random direction and continued walking.

There were so many strange sights, glimpsed at the end of corridors or through small windows. A monstrous zombie gigantic with bulging muscles groaned at them from a cracked window. In another cell, there were pigs packed up so tightly that the dead had been left to rot. Yet another cell had machines doing inexplicable things that just did not look right.

There was one room which held a terribly familiar person. The door was not open, but Rythian only needed to glance at the window slit to recognise them.

It was himself, in his old clothes.

Ignoring Strife's protests, Rythian closed his eyes and tried to draw his magics close.

His magic had left him in the last world, but whatever had happened to him, whatever was in that room before him - it gave his magic back, and if he pushed past the parts of his mind that screamed no, he could _feel_ something. There _was_ magic here, tampered and drained yes, but it was enough. He opened his eyes

and shifted across the door.

Exhaustion hit - without a ring or other focusing artifact, it was hard for him to enderport, and he hadn't used it in a long time... There was no time to give in to that, though.

He walked up to the tank, full of bubbling purple liquid. The clone, even in sleep, looked angry - no, furious, occasionally thrashing. The fuzzy memories of fury were stronger now, close to this clone.

There was a monitor next to the tank. It had been so long, but Rythian still knew his way around some technology. He navigated the menus that were thankfully in the common language and came to the explanation.

He read.

He fumed.

He suddenly realised that Strife's banging on the door was now more frantic, and with a final glance at the Rythian in the tank, he enderported back to see-

"You're not supposed to be here!" A certain ginger dwarf quite incongruous with the surroundings was standing in the corridor, hands on his hips and looking rather confused.

"Neither are you if I'm not mistaken!" Strife gave a quick glare at Rythian, and returned to the staring contest with Honeydew.

"Honeydew? What are you doing here?" Rythian asked.

Honeydew just seemed to stop. "I- who are yo-" he began to say, and then his eyes rolled upwards and he stopped breathing.

Around the corner came a man in red and gold, running and panting as he typed furiously on a small tablet. As he came to a stop, he looked up at the two and smiled. "Sorry about that! You weren't _quite_ programmed into his subroutines, and we're still working out the kinks in his brain... Ah, but did you enjoy your short stint of freedom? I haven't been a gracious host so far."

  _Xephos._

* * *

 


	11. the almighty himself

* * *

When a world manifests a god who refuses to work with YogLabs, it must be culled. Not all worlds produce gods, but a god who dislikes us is an unnecessary risk.

 

The world that they protect is untouchable. I can send my men there, but then they are watched and stopped. So, I revert to other methods.

 

I find a great mage preparing to cross the worlds, and as he crosses, I interrupt. I revert him to his worst memories so that he can do what I cannot. The god of that world stymies me so, but even he is not invulnerable to destruction from within his land.

 

Imagine my pleasant surprise when this mage makes an enemy of one of the most powerful people there. Imagine how happy I was when this man, normally so safe and sane, creates a world ending nuke.

 

Rythian Enderborn. William Strife.

 

Imagine how _upset_ I am now.

* * *

"Nice monologue." 

Sometimes, Strife regretted his smartassery. This wasn't one of those times, though. Even restrained by robots, even thrown into a tiny room with a maniacal Xephos striding around behind a table and gesturing at the air, he relished the thought of making this asshole feel uncomfortable.

Oh, god. Parv was getting to him. He missed that bloody bastard, even after that dagger slipped into his heart. Was Parv enjoying what surely must be all of Strife's forceful energy from his blood? Strife certainly hoped so.

Xephos curled a lip in disgust. "Can't a man just rant and rave in peace?" he asked. "Here I am, doing you the favour of explaining just why you have to die, and you- you mock me!"

"I can do a better evil monologue than you." Rythian immediately took on a sarcastic tone of voice. "Oh, look at me, I'm soooooo evil! Look at me as I twirl my moustache and tell you my life story!"

Strife couldn't help but snigger. "That is what you sound like right now, dude."

"Quiet!" Xephos slammed his fist into the table. "This- you're just as bad as Gamechap and Bertie!"

Strife didn't know those names, but Rythian seemed to. "Oh, what happened to them? They just kinda disappeared one day."

"They were very useful for destroying useless worlds at first. They exploded everything they touched! Then they became more obsessed with _breasts_ and being lewd, so they had to go." Xephos snarled at the very thought. "Their death was rather ironic. They were cr-"

"Okay, okay, don't go on!" Rythian said.

"Yeah, we get the idea. You kill us and we don't respawn." A horrifying thought occurred. "What happens to the other us-es on the other worlds?"

Xephos shrugged. "I guess they think they'll come back, but they don't. Like all the other people who don't have master clones."

"Oh."

Strife thought of them. He hadn't actually _died_ before coming to Minecraftia. That first death was- interesting, unexpected and terrifying. Lost in the jungle, starving and staring at his GPS in the hopes of getting to that temple - he hadn't noticed the rasping hiss, but he had definitely noticed the ensuing explosion.

When he returned to that spot an hour later, he made sure to have a sword out at all times.

"As a despotic tryha- _tyrant_ of YogLabs, I do sincerely regret this," Xephos said. His eyes said precisely the opposite. "It is _such_ a pain to find suitable replacements."

Strife cast his eyes around the room, looking for any possibilities of escape. They weren't tied up and their hands were free, but that just meant that the 'despotic tyrant' was confident that they couldn't touch him. The robots in the room also looked ready to pounce at any time.

He couldn't die here, though. He hadn't fully set up his startup! Strife had not started solutioning yet!

He looked to Rythian and said, out of the corner of his mouth, "can you teleport?" This was the second time he had asked, and again Rythian shook his head silently. Maybe Xephos had his own potty mouth wizardy thing stopping Rythian, or maybe the endermage just didn't want to face the robots that were surely outside.

Xephos continued to ramble on, although to his credit he abruptly stopped when suddenly with a loud hiss, the robots began to power down. "What is the meaning of this?!" he demanded.

The door slid open to reveal a rather dazed looking Honeydew. "Are you really going to kill them?" he asked in a plaintive tone.

Xephos' voice grew soft. He said, "Eventually! But if you prefer, we can experiment on them first. We don't have to destroy them straight away, friend."

Honeydew scrunched up his face in intense concentration. It was strangely fun to watch, seeing all the expressions that passed across that small hairy face. Finally, thought done, he slammed a hand onto the door and said, "RUN!"

Rythian vanished in a puff of cyan smoke and reappeared outside. Honeydew, on short legs, began to comically gallop away from the scene at a surprisingly fast pace.

Strife _booked_ it.

Past dead robots, past endless corridors that all looked the same - Strife assumed that Honeydew knew where he was going, because he certainly didn't! Really. This place needed a map or better signs.

Behind, he could hear sparks of electricity as the robots began to power back up. Swearing in the language of his people, Strife continued to push himself. He's never had to run like this before, fearing for his life and not knowing what came next. He always knew what was going to happen, he always had a fucking plan. Now, he had to redirect all of that passion and forcefulness into impulsiveness and making-shit-up-on-the-fly-ness, and he did not like it.

Honeydew rounded a corner, slammed his fist into what looked like a palm reader and then shot into the door that suddenly slid open. Rythian stepped in, Strife after him - and they found themselves in a room full of screens and buttons. The dwarf was already pressing a few buttons and with a soft click, the door closed and locked.

"He's- he's going to rewrite my brain any second now," Honeydew said, panting as he did so. With a smile, he held up the tablet that Xephos had typed on, earlier. "This should delay him a little bit, but it won't take him long to do it!"

Strife, bent over and trying to catch his breath, said, "Thank you SO much for helping us. Why, though?"

"I did some thinkin' after I first saw you, and- I'm not dumb, you know! Sometimes I get these thoughts that aren't sanctioned by those wires and junk in my brain, and this was one of those times. Xeph's gonna wipe me all out now, but y'know he's soft on me so he won't be that mad." Honeydew chuckled.

"Where are we?" Rythian was looking around at the various screens. His cyan eyes seemed dimmer now, but they had a different kind of intensity inside now.

"The main control room for- something. Xeph was here earlier and he pressed something, and I think that's how you got here."

Well.

Strife had an idea. Actually, he had quite a lot of ideas, but most of them were probably not that feasible. Parv was probably not going to come in guns - or blood - a-blazing, and neither would Xephos just die of self inflicted evilness.

But this was his forte - lots of machines, interconnected and electrical in one or many beautiful systems.

He got to work.

* * *

<Welcome to the InterYog Communications Center! Breaking blocks and hearts!!>

<The time is: ??:??:??? pm GMT>

<You are signed in as: W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡>

 

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡ has logged on!>

<acparvis> WILL WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN

<acparvis> and why is your name funny

<Zoeya> is Rythian with you?!

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> Well I can't explain right now but

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> This is going to sound really, really bad.

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> Yeah I can't really make this sound good at all

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> I need you all to uh

 

<KirinDave> I'll handle this.

<KirinDave> We are now in a private channel.

<KirinDave> And I do think I know where you are.

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> hang on, don't you have a grudge against me

<KirinDave> Well yes. But there will be time for messing with you later.

<KirinDave> What do you need?

* * *

A great and mighty roar echoed through the entire facility, shaking the walls and floors. It was tinged with a terrible lingering hiss that rattled the bones and told the reptile brain - you do not belong here.

This is _my_ land.

It was a painfully familiar sound to Rythian. All his hairs stood on end, and he realised when Strife looked at him oddly that his hands were clutching at the table, that he must have looked like death itself.

"That's the Enderdragon, isn't it? But what's it doing here?" Strife continued to tap on buttons as he spoke.

"She _can't_ be here. She rarely leaves the End - and to come to such a place? They can't hold her if they had her." Rythian tried to speak in measured, even tones. He tried to be calm.

Honeydew said, with an uneasy laugh, "Uh, Xeph's got a few. He even let me ride one!"

"A few."

"Yup."

There was no such thing as a kind, benevolent Notch. In fact, Notch was dead and Xephos had killed him.

Rythian began to experience a mental error screen, combined with a lot of mental screaming. This was not the best thing to do considering the situation, so he forced his head to quiet down and to think of

_Zoey._

He had wronged her, and now he did not know if he would ever see her again. He had forced her out of his mind through the whole time.

He needed her now.

Sighing, Rythian slumped to the ground and stared at his hands, stared at his palms and wondered about regret. He hadn't been in control at that time. His anger had been artificially inflated, his emotions twisted and toyed with - but it was _still_   him, it was still his actions and he had hurt her-

"I'm done," said Strife. He stood up and stretched, a languorous action for such an active man. "Now, all we need is to get the upper hand. Root around for something usable before Xephos gets here."

"Usable? You mean- a way back to our world, or weapons to fight him back with?" Either option was fine, really.

"The latter. I don't think we can get back without chucking ourselves into those tanks, and I doubt Xephos would let us go that easily." Strife glanced meaningfully at Honeydew. "Surely he must have turned you off by now, right?"

Rythian also looked at Honeydew, really _looked_. "Hey, if he can rewrite your brain and stuff, if he can send stuff to your brain - can't he see what _you're_ seeing? What you're thinking?"

Honeydew said nothing.

Strife said something that sounded very much like a non Minecraftian swear. The two started to step towards the door-

when the door and the surrounding wall burst open, and a dark draconic head poked into the room.

* * *

 


	12. the almighty herself

* * *

 Like icy flowers in a metallic field, the glass bloomed. One by one, the doors swung open. Ice began to melt onto the floor in tiny rivulets, drawing out an intricate pattern of water.

Each dark passenger encased within the frosty cocoons slowly began to stir. Their memories were faded and dark, yet they all had one thing in common.

A bright, shuddering energy that resolved itself into electricity.

A man in dark robes, once a lower god for the world of chaos - now the God of this world - willing to do anything to protect it.

They emerged from the tanks, clawing and tearing at the icy prisons. Confusion ran through their minds, as expected.

One of them voiced what they were all thinking.

"What the _fuck_?!" said Xephos.

* * *

<KirinDave> Oh, I think I can _certainly_ do that.

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> Get them to get combat ready if there's time

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> I've set it so that they'll keep their inventory

<KirinDave> I don't think I'll need to. They haven't had the chance to relax after your little tiff.

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> And make sure to kill only one if there're more than one

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> I have no idea what would happen otherwise!

<KirinDave> Some won't be joining your little party, I'm afraid.

<KirinDave> Like a certain dog and his friends.

<W̧̛_̕S҉t̷͝r̡̢͝i̧̛f̛e͡> we need all the help we can get

<KirinDave> You don't need _traitors_ , oh no.

<KirinDave> And I won't be joining you either.

<KirinDave> Good luck, Strife.

* * *

It didn't take long for Zoeya to realise that Rythian was not among their number. She quickly counted the number of open tubes and the number of people and- yes, two were not accounted for. Parv had not cottoned onto that, seeing as he was shouting for Strife's name. Zoeya watched as Parv did a double take at three tanks containing similarly suited people to himself, and then continued to yell for his friend.

She imagined Rythian emerging into this place, alone and lost. He had something to do with this, she was certain - and this place had something to do with his mad- his state of mind.

Someone tapped her on her shoulder. "You okay?" Zoeya turned around to see Fiona, holding a sword and looking determined.

"I'm fine!" she said in a very convincing voice.

"My Zo's not around here, but that Dave guy said she'd be fine. Thought she'd want me to keep an eye on a pretty girl like you." Fiona blushed as she said the last bit.

From her other side, Zoeya heard a familiar low growl. "Teep looks after me, but thanks for the help," she said. "We need to find Rythian. He's not here, but from the number of tanks, he should have been.”

"Strife too!" Uninvited, Parvis appeared behind Zoeya. He bounded into the conversation physically, his voice manic with cheer and panic. "He was in the chat earlier- you saw that, right? You saw!”

She had.

Zoeya looked back. The group was beginning to coalesce into some semblance of unity, although there were some rather bumpy bits. Sips and Sjin were either arguing or professing their love to each other or both, and it looked like Nano was trying to talk to a Lalna that wasn't her own. Xephos was trying to take control, but it must have been like herding cats.

"Screw them!" Parv said. "We can find our friends by ourselves."

Fiona turned to Parv, sword out. “You want him coming with us?" Suspicion tinged her every word, and certainly, Zoeya could not blame her.

Putting on her most stern face, which was admittedly not that stern, Zoeya said, "As long as you behave yourself! Rythian doesn't get hurt, okay?"

"As long as Strife doesn't either." Parv beamed in mute agreement.

In response, Teep bared several layers of sharp teeth.

"Someone's gonna get hurt if this carries on like this," muttered Fiona. She lowered her sword and began to move towards the ominous looking entrance. Slowly, Zoeya, Teep and Parv followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

"Oh, I don't mind hurting other people," Parv said. "I have _all_ kinds of hurty spells!" He dragged the 'all' out into a drawl.

Zoeya did not look at him. She did not want to think of blood and chaos. "That's... nice," she said. "Good for you!"

"I know, right?”

They walked on in solemn silence, into the corridors so clean and crisp. Zoeya would have happily chatted to Fiona to try and keep the mood up, even if she couldn’t be the Zoey that Fiona needed. She would have told stories of her own life, of mushrooms and excitement, and she would have at least been a friend to such an amazing girl to steal the heart of her other self.

She could not with Parv there.

Blood dripped from every action he took. Metaphorically, of course, because that would just be messy! But it was just too awkward.

“I guess I should apologize to Rythian,” said Parv. “I really fucked him up!”

And that.

There was a time when she had been willing to help Rythian take his dark revenge, when she had even revelled in the thought of killing Sjin. She had _burned_ for his sins! Sometimes, she thought that the fires from that world had persisted, carried on within her heart, only to be snuffed out with the detonation of Lalna’s bomb.

She could not, now. But maybe some small sliver of that fire had survived, because listening to Parv talk, hearing how he had driven Rythian to insanity with his actions at Cabertown- she tried to quell the anger within her.

They walked onwards.

Signs of destruction could be seen around them. They were subtle, tears in the walls and holes in the floors. The more concerning thing was that they looked new.

As they rounded a corner, they came to an involuntary stop as a great roar echoed around them. Zoeya looked at Fiona and Teep. The latter shrugged, and Parv gave a very comical “huh?”.

“Whatever that was,” Fiona said, “that’s gotta be big. And dangerous.”

Again, whatever it was roared, louder and fiercer and _closer_. Purple flashes erupted in front of Zoeya’s eyes and she staggered back. The others looked at her in surprise, apart from Teep who rushed forward and caught her.

She righted herself.

She _knew_ what it was.

She ran, blind to the yells behind her, blind to the surroundings, grasping and almost sobbing in relief and fear. Here was a door, unlocked- no, gashed open like fragile paper. Here was the wall in pieces around her.

Here was ruin and rubble, twisted remains of glassy screens and wires torn and tread apart.

Here were two men in a corner, bloodied and sweating. One clutching his glasses with one hand and grabbing at a wound with the other, his black waistcoat soaked with a strange alien green seeping from his cuts and wounds.

One bent in an almost feral pose, eyes dimly cyan but with the fierce intensity of a dead man, dressed in- the robes and the scarf and the calming white and purple of a saner, safer man, but she couldn’t feel relieved because _Rythian was hurt_.

Here was the Queen of the End, bowed with reins threaded through her sinuous form, waiting for orders as any obedient dog would. Next to her, an exact double of the dwarf back in that room of ice, his eyes glassy and faded.

And here, holding the leash of the Queen, the sword in his hand dripping, _here_ was Xephos.

He couldn’t be, though.

His eyes betrayed him.

“Did you bring your friends?” he said, as casually as if he’d been talking to a friend. “I’m going to have to kill them all, now.”

Rythian tried to say something, but all he could do was wheeze.

In sheer, instinctive panic, she began to move closer- but before she could get anywhere close, the blade was at her throat and Xephos was saying, “Friend, I think it’s better if you desist. As should the rest of your little party."

She heard gasps behind her, and a cry of anger from Parv as he reacted to the sight of his friend and then the rattling hiss of the Enderdragon, moving on Xephos’ command. They couldn’t possibly do anything against that thing.

She couldn’t do _anything_ , but Rythian was right there. He looked up at her, and the look of relief on his face was heartbreaking.

It was somewhat of a relief when Xephos herded them up into a group and forced them to walk, when she could grab Rythian and support him as they staggered down the corridor to the tune of Xephos’ maddened ranting. She whispered whatever she could think of and tried not to think of the Rythian who had attacked her, tried not to flinch at his touch.

He needed her now.

Time would have to heal _that_ wound, but it was time that they did not have now.

* * *

There's a song, dimly remembered by the conscious mind. It beats through the veins and it cracks through memories and stories.

It is the song of blood.

It is an occupational hazard for those masters of their craft. The price of being the best is to pour your entirety into the world, and to not mourn if it never comes back. It might, crawling and limping and bleeding, but it will never ever be the same.

He wasn't there, not yet, but with every drop of blood he came ever so closer to it. William Strife was there, in everything he did, and oh Parv envied that so much, the consuming obsession with being the best.

And now and again, Strife was broken and bleeding. He limped onwards as Xephos marched on, leaning on Parv but trying his very hardest not to, trying to draw away from Parv even though he would have welcomed it. The stubborn bastard!

He told Strife so, and received only a grunt in reply.

Oh, he could so easily break free from the ranks, cross over to that _bastard_ (who wholeheartedly deserved that, unlike Strife who he only described as “bastard” out of love) and break him with his sword. He could draw the dagger across his face and watch him _squirm_ as the tasty _blood_ dripped down that sneering mouth. But if Parv did that, what would happen to Strife? He couldn’t take on that dragon who walked slowly behind them, whose eyes watched them walk with a wicked intelligence. So he swallowed his pride and he schemed, although his scheming was really just a flight of fancy at this point.

They were herded into a large room, again covered in the same technology that seemed to grow over the rest of the facility. Already present was the rest of the group, from the normal, not evil Xephos whose eyes widened at the sight of _this_ Xephos, to the mad hatters sulking in a corner, to Sips and Sjin trying to laugh off their predicament despite the fear in their eyes. Villagers in lab coats and robots watched over them, surrounding the group.

“The party’s all here,” Xephos said brightly. “I can’t say I was planning for this, but what a pleasant surprise!”

He was answered by a loud “EAT SHIT” from Ross.

“I wouldn’t do that.” With a gesture, Xephos directed the scientists to surround the hairy man. The other two Sirs immediately sprung to action, drawing swords and hacking at those who would dare take their third away from them.

Parv cheered as the scientists fell. He stopped when everyone glared at him, including the evil Xephos.

Sounding disgusted, Xephos said, “Do I have to do _everything_ myself?!” He faced the Hatters and took out his sword-

He slashed a wound into the air. That was the best Parv could mentally describe it- he tore into the air itself, revealing stars and shadows, and then he walked through-

appeared next to Ross, and stabbed the man through the gut. Then, with naught a word, to the tune of the horrified shrieks of the Hatters, he slashed at the air again and appeared in his original spot.

“Anyone else care to try me?”

As expected, there was no answer. Everyone watched in horror as the walrus and the green man knelt down next to Ross, to try and stabilise him and help him-

“Fuck you.”

With all the venom she could muster up, with all the forcefulness of a vengeful owl maiden, Lomadia spat the two words out. She was already drawing her sword with one hand- the other, a wand.

“Oh? The owl lady. You know, I never saw what _he_ saw in you.” This Xephos gestured towards the other Xephos, the _good_ one from their world.

“That’s because he’s _better_ than you, you fucking lunatic! He might be a clone of you, or you might be a clone of him, but he is a better man than you are and I fucking _pity_ you!” The other Xephos tried to stop Lomadia with a hand, but she pushed him aside.

There was a cough, right next to Parv, and everyone turned towards him. No, towards Rythian, next to Parv, hanging onto Zoeya. “You toyed with us,” he said, his voice breaking with pain and fury. “You manipulated our world- and for what purpose?! She’s right and you, my friend, are an utter _asshole_.”

Xephos glared at Rythian, and took a step to possibly teleport to the mage and to kill him-

but Strife spoke up. 

"It wasn't his fault," he said. "You made him- you used him to rile us up. If you're going to go and slash anybody up, do it to me!  _I'm_ the one who stupidly fell for your tricks!"

“No!” Parv said, at a loss for anything else. He summoned his demonic sword and almost leaped into a defensive position. If Xephos was going to go after his friend, he was going to have to go through the Parvinator first!

Xephos said nothing.

What followed could not be described as anything but chaotic.

The villagers in their lab coats pulled tiny laser guns out of their pockets and began to fire indiscriminately. The robots followed suit with far more precision and far more power. They fell to the swords and the sheer, desperate instinct to survive from those who had been struck from their world.

Lomadia was a warrior queen, killing the villagers in droves with a sword in one hand and casting dark, witchy spells with her other. Nilesy was following her example, the usually quite foppish man shooting out dark curses as easily as he attempted to sell pools. Behind them, the Xephos and the Honeydew from their world had their back as Xephos slashed with his own diamond sword and Honeydew cleaved the enemy with the atomic disassembler that Strife had given him so very long ago.

The others were doing a good job, too. The Hatters fought back to back, Ross soldiering on despite his almost-disembowelment, Alsmiffy casting his own strange magics which were quite explosive and Trottimus moving at a deceptive speed despite his bulk. Sjin and Sips were trading quips as they fought, harkening back to the days of their easy partnership. Lalna was there too, and others who Parv did not know.

Nano was floating slightly, her hands wreathed in dark flames and a serene smile on her face as the enemy around her died to her polluting presence.

Over here,  Zoeya was taking villagers down with non-lethal mushroom spores and sleep-inducing poisons, and at her back, Fiona showed off what a trained mercenary could do. They were shielding Rythian as best as they could, slumped on the ground without weapon or will.

And Parv.

He danced around and drove his sword into villagers and robots alike. He could not help but laugh as he did so, could not help but revel in the chaos and the blood that poured! But, his enjoyment was tainted by his worry for his friend.

He shielded Strife whenever he could, taking the hits meant for him, feeling the pain but smiling at the fact that for every wound he took, Strife would not suffer.

Strife had suffered enough!

The Enderdragon was roaring now, and Parv turned to face it. It was airborne now, destroying the walls and the floor with its own touch. It flew through a few villagers and they died on the spot. It flew _through_ an unwary Panda, the humanoid creature who associated with Nilesy, and he cried out in pain. Nilesy turned at the horrific cry and charged the dragon, but was himself struck by the beast. Parv, stabbing through a villager, could see that they weren’t dead yet - but they were nearly so.

And, flitting in and out of reality, Xephos was striking at people, dancing away from their strikes into whatever dark world he inhabited within his sword strikes.

The villagers and the robots were falling, but the Enderdragon and Xephos still posed a very tangible threat. Parv grabbed the prone Strife and pulled him towards the side of the room, away from the fighting. Zoeya and Fiona had the same idea and were busy with Rythian. They placed the two where the villagers and the robots had been cleared, and with an unspoken agreement, turned to guard the two with their lives.

Perhaps they didn’t need to.

The great dark goddess that was Nano, wreathed in purple flames of fury, was in the air now. Her skin was entirely purple now, and her eyes glowed with hatred. She was facing the Enderdragon now, the Queen of the End verses the Queen of the Flux.

“ **M o Th e R** ,” Nano hissed. “ **h El P me.** ”

In bright, blazing purple lights, they clashed.

Parv turned away from the spectacle, unable to look at the blinding light. He looked for the other threat, the one who really deserved to be cut up and slaughtered.

Xephos, the evil one, was nowhere to be found.

Parv turned to Zoeya and Fiona. “I- can you look after Strife? I’m gonna go after him!”

They nodded. They knew exactly who “him” was.

He held out his blood spell and zipped to the other side of the room, where all of the villagers and the robots had been killed and the other people from his world were staring in shock at the great purple fight. There was no Xephos here, apart from the normal, not-evil one.

There was no Lomadia here.

Parv looked around frantically for any signs of the two, and saw _feathers_ at the doorway. He blood-spelled towards it, and saw in the ruined corridor more feathers.

Owl feathers.

He followed the trail of destruction and feathers, through fallen walls and sparkling machines and the rubble. The lights were beginning to fail, flickering and dimming with every movement.

The corpses of villagers and failed lab experiments littered the floor, feathers atop them like a mockery of a funeral. Parv didn’t care if he stepped on them, didn’t even care about their pitiful little lives.

He wanted _Xephos_ , damn it!

The feathers led to a broken door at the end of the corridor, and through it were two dim figures.

Parvis stepped inside.

* * *

 

Like pigs to the slaughter, they were all gathered. Oh, the look on the other Xephos’ face as I came into the room with my prisoners! It was like looking into a mirror.

 

I don’t like mirrors, now. They remind me of myself.

 

With you by my side, dear friend, I took them to a holding cell. I was going to take them to my latest experiment. You wouldn’t know about this one, but I thought it fitting. The results are still inconclusive, but I think it will fail.

 

I wanted it to make me a god.

 

We have tested it on a few things. A creeper, a zombie, a skeleton- but they never returned, and we never received any godly evidence. I thought it was a fitting way to get rid of them, quickly and cleanly.

 

We never saw any signs of those monsters ever again.

 

Alas, they proved more difficult to contain. I tried to make an example of one, and instead of cowing them, they became vicious and wild. I blame the owl lady, the one who my other self craved.

 

She followed me here. With flame and fury in her eyes, she dogged my every step, owl feathers falling from her hair with her every move. It would have been hilarious if she hadn’t been so _persistent_.

 

She cut me a few times. You wouldn’t have liked that, friend.

 

And finally, I found myself at where I was to take them, cornered by the owl _whore_. She disarmed me before I could teleport away, and with her sword at my throat, she hissed insults at me.

 

The blood mage came to watch, and how his laughter stung.

 

I had no recourse, my friend. My dearest friend, Honeydew.

 

I did this all for you, you know.

 

I wonder if you know.

 

I would never have let myself fall to such people. I would rather let my own experiments take me where they may.

 

I threw myself into it.

 

The sand scoured my skin and tore at my bones, dug into every pore of mine. It drank at my screams and it ate my voice, scrubbed my throat clean until I could talk no more. I could see my skin turning white, from stress or from the sand, I do not know.

 

The sand bit at me for an eternity, Honeydew. After a while, it grew quite boring, and the pain quite mundane.

 

It never stopped. Even when I became aware of my surroundings in a great, dark desert, even when I stood up and found the strength to walk. I can still feel it, even now, biting and tearing.

 

It is a far dearer friend to me than you ever were.

 

I know who I am, now. I know who I was meant to be, who I would have become.

 

I am in the distant past of Minecraftia. With sand and fury, I will take over the cursed land, and I will wait for us to arrive in the frozen wastes…

 

I cannot wait.

* * *

 


	13. wizards and fools

* * *

 

Through the thick walls of YogLabs, music could be heard.

Zoeya preferred the rockin’ sounds of the Jailhouse Six as opposed to this headbanging loudness, which really wasn’t melodious at all. She supposed that it was better than the grinding of the various machines that pervaded the whole place, but that was little solace.

It had interrupted her storytelling. She had just gotten to the best part, where the brave mushroom princess had declared that she was going to resign and go on a mighty adventure! The mushroom princess, on her great green horse, would ride forth into the unknown, armed only with kindness.

Later, there was going to be a great dark monster who had been blackmailed into being evil. The mushroom princess was going to make friends with him and help him, because that was what the good people did, what heroes did-

forgive

and

forget.

She was trying so hard to do that, even when through closed eyes she kept seeing the flash of betrayal in his eyes. The attack didn’t hurt, but what did was the meaning of the thing.

Her thoughts on the matter were too scrambled, and it was too painful to properly pull them together. She sat back and tried to focus on the here and the now.

She was sitting on a bed with a duvet of stars so detailed that she almost felt like she was falling into them. Above her were stars on a projected screen, around her were books on all the myriad topics in the multiverse, and beside her, under the covers, was the dreamer

Out loud, she said, “Why do you get the best bed?” She meant for it to sound like a joke, but accusation crept in and she winced.

Tucked under the blanket, bandaged up with tender care yet looking so peaceful – Rythian said nothing. His hand, poking out from under the blanket, twitched. Zoeya placed her hand on it and imagined herself sending positive, rainbow vibes.

Maybe she was trying to give herself those vibes too.

Across from her, Teep was sitting on the floor. His great reptilian head was lying on the bed, and occasionally he would snort. He was nuzzling Rythian now, which was either a show of affection or worry.

Occasionally, Fiona would come in to check on the both of them. She would bring food with her sometimes because in their vigils, Zoeya and Teep would forget to eat. “That ain’t healthy,” she would say to their protestations that really, they were fine!

Zoeya wasn’t even sure if she deserved to eat, but she swallowed down the food under the watchful eyes of Fiona. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way, really.

Fiona was coming into the room now and she did not look happy. “Want me to shut him up for you?” she said, loud enough to be heard over the din of the electric guitar.

“Uh, I’ll do it,” Zoeya said, surprising herself. Well, she hadn’t really left Rythian’s side for long in these days since the fight, and-

the story was how she was dealing with this, and even through the cacophony, she recognised a reflection of that in the devil’s music.

She let go of Rythian’s hand.

Zoeya didn’t like how she was getting familiar with this place. She was beginning to tell the twisting, turning corridors apart, although she did still need help. After Honeydew had gotten lost for the twenty-sixth time, Xephos and Lalna had gone and created GPSs for everyone.

That was the Xephos and Honeydew from their world. The Honeydew from this world would need to be rehabilitated and deprogrammed from his programming, but they couldn’t spare any time for him right now.

The Xephos of this world had been taken care of. Nobody knew what that entailed.

Her destination wasn’t particularly far away, however. The music had trailed away when Zoeya had drawn closer. As she approached, the door slid open and Parvis stepped out.

“Zoeya!” Parv said. “Were you going to complain about the noise? I’d say sorry, but that’s not the kind of person I am, you know.”

What could you say in response to that? To, really, anything Parv said? She had to think about it. “It’d be cool if you could do it just a tiny bit quieter, though!” Zoeya smiled, although she wasn’t sure if she was being genuine or not.

“Fine.” Parv looked at her as if he was trying to figure out the next number to slot into his Sudoku. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said.

“Yeah, I… haven’t really been away from Rythian.”

In the most gentle tone that Zoeya had ever heard from him, Parv said, “I haven’t left Will, either.”

After a period of sympathetic silence, Zoeya blurted out, “I’m going to go see what’s up with the others.”

“I’ll come with you!” Parv said, to her utter surprise. “I don’t really know what’s going on out there.”

They walked.

Small talk was hard to make with a murderer. For starters, it was all Zoeya could do to not ask-

“Why?”

“Why what?” Parv, only just taller than her, still managed to look down on her with a quizzical grin.

She knew the answer, of course. “Why did you do that to Rythian?”

Parv shrugged. “The world,” he said, “doesn’t need a reason. I do have a reason, but it’s not going to satisfy you. Did Xephos have a reason for doing all this?”

Zoeya blinked, taken aback. “He- he might have, once- but he ended up being a real butt at the end, like he forgot why!” She thought for a second. “Is that the same with you?”

“Are you seriously comparing me to him?” Parvis looked quite aghast, but he was still grinning.

She didn’t want to think of the motivations of bad guys. It was easier to think of them as just plain evil, but then it turned out that your villain just wanted to save the world at first, or to help his friend in his own, chaotic way.

She changed the topic.  “We’re- they’re going to need our help!” she said.

“They?”

Zoeya sighed. “It wasn’t their fault, but doesn’t it feel like it? Don’t you want to blame them for the- the betrayal and, gosh, everything they’ve done?”

Parv said nothing.

“And they’re going to blame themselves.”

“I won’t let Will do that,” Parv said. “I have enough ego for the both of us!”

Zoeya almost laughed at that. “They’ll make it,” she said. “They’re both wizards."

“Will’s not a wizard.”

“But he’s a wizard at the technology stuff. Gosh, his tower was pretty impressive, if a bit drab! And obviously Rythian’s a wizard too."

Contemplatively, Parv said, “They’re both fools, too."

Zoeya agreed.

They walked on, passing by the terminals where those trapped here were typing to those who they had left behind. Fiona was there, smiling at something the other Zoey had said, and so was their Xephos presumably chatting to the Lalna that was Livid. For some reason, Sips was here too, scoffing at whatever was on Xephos’ screen.

They passed the Room of the Master Clones, where the Coffee Lalna was directing both Honeydews in carrying heavy metal equipment. Sjin was disturbing Coffee with inane questions, it seemed.

They stopped at Nanosounds’ room.

Lomadia nodded curtly to them as Zoeya and Parv entered. Next to her, Nilesy was fiddling with a few witchy artifacts, but he seemed quite distracted by the shifting purple lights illuminating the room.

The Goddess of the Flux had managed to defeat the Enderdragon, but at a cost. The flux had overtaken her body so completely, even beginning to spiral out from her form in great translucent tendrils.

With the remote help of Duncan, who had been studying the flux for obvious reasons, Nanosounds had been placed into an unused tank. Strange liquids had been poured in and strange settings had been set based solely on pure conjecture.

She was stable for now. She looked quite peaceful, her eyes closed in serene dreaming, the purple tendrils of Flux resolving themselves into gossamer fractal wings.

She didn’t even seem to be aware of the wires and tubes stabbed into her skin.

Zoeya had to turn away from the sight, wincing with sympathetic pain as she did so. She had seen the clone Rythian while looking for a bed for her one, the Rythian that somehow had been a ‘backup’ for his darkest days, to be reset to for Xephos’ amusement. He had also been entangled in a web of wires.

When they had released him, he had died instantly.

This land was a land of horrors, and they would have to create more horrors to get back home. They would have to climb back into those icy coffins and let themselves freeze, let the cursed cycle of respawning continue…

Zoeya tried not to think about that as she made her way back to Rythian.

She had to be strong. She had to be just like the mushroom princess in that story she had literally just made up.

Could she do it?

She wasn’t sure, but she was going to try!

* * *

The light was harsh and bright. Murmuring, William Strife asked blearily for someone to turn it down because he was trying to sleep, goddamnit.

He was answered by a raucous, giddy laugh.

“Parv, stop it,” he said, and then he opened his eyes. What met him was not the ceiling of his bedroom at the Solution Towers, nor the cracked stone of Parvis’ castle, but a pure white ceiling.

It came to him suddenly, just as Parv’s hideous face came into view, grinning the same demented grin as always. “Strife! You’re awake!” he said, rather redundantly.

All the pain from the last few days hit him, and he groaned from the aches. Some of the wounds weren’t a part of this body, he remembered, but that didn’t stop him feeling them. “Are we still in Yoglabs?” he asked. He was on a rather comfortable bed, which did not feel very Yogslab-y at all.

Parv’s face lit up even more. “Yup. All the tubes kinda got a bit broken, but now you’re awake we can try and fix them! The others got started but really, you’re the best at technology around here!”

Wow. He felt flattered. Groaning even more, Strife pulled himself into a sitting position and surveyed his surroundings. He was in a rather nice bedroom with nice carpets, despite all the mining paraphernalia around him. Who needed this many shovels in one room?

“This is Honeydew’s room! He gave it to us. Well, we made him give it to us. It’s pretty fun programming him to do stuff, but Lalna’s trying to deprogram him, which is a shame.” Parv did look rather disappointed at this.

It was a cute look on him. Strife quickly denied that thought and moved on. “Where’s Rythian?”

“He’s in Xephos’ room,” Parv said. “He hasn’t woken up yet either..”

Strife began to try and pull himself out of the bed, prompting Parv to rush to his side protesting. “You need to rest!”

When Parv touched him, he drew back instinctively, memories of blood and torture flickering through his brain. He immediately apologized, saying that it wasn’t him, saying that he didn’t know what came over him…

“Zoeya was talking to me, and she says you’ll be pretty traumatised after all you went through. So, what we need is to give you time and space to heal! And I can be your therapist- your theraParv!” Parv sounded ecstatic at the thought, but his eyes did betray concern and worry.

“It’s okay,” Strife said. “I- Strife can solve his own solutions!” He tried to smile to assuage Parv’s worry.

“But you can’t do that all the time. Remember, Strifeykins, you have a kickass guitarist blood mage at your side!”

“Strifeykins?!” Strife snorted in disbelief. He continued to pull himself out of the bed, and managed to stand up, if not a little shakily. “I need to talk to Rythian,” he said.

They argued for a while, just like the good old days. Finally, Parv gave in, but he insisted on accompanying him. Fortunately, or deliberately, Xephos’ room was rather close to Honeydew’s room, and Strife did not have far to go.

This room was far more sophisticated with what Strife assumed to be a real time display of the night sky on a giant screen on the ceiling. Bookshelves with a range of subjects lined the room all around.

Zoeya was sitting on the bed, and she was talking. She didn’t quite notice the two when they walked in until Parv cleared his throat, and then she moved aside to reveal a quite awake Rythian. She began to say something, something about how he literally just woke up and wow!

Strife limped over to stand next to Rythian. “Nice bedroom,” he said.

Rythian laughed, his voice a bit raspier than usual. “Thanks. Apparently yours is pretty good too, if not a bit dwarfy.”

His hand was touching Zoeya’s, Strife noticed, and he resolved to give the two some time alone. He needed some time with Parv alone, but he needed to be here.

“So I guess we won’t be fighting anymore,” he said.

“I hope not! Zoeya says that when we get back home, there’s going to be a big truce drawn up between everyone- and if anyone breaks it, they’re gonna be given time out here.”

Strife chuckled at the thought. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”

“I’m sorry too. It wasn’t either of our faults, but I know what you mean- and yeah, fair enough.”

They talked, of what they had missed during their sleep, of shadows in their dreams and the struggles they would need to go through later. They were going to have to suffer for what they had done, but they could become stronger for it, and they could help each other. Zoeya and Parv chimed in, reassuring and supportive, friends to the bitter end.

Finally, Strife excused himself. Leaning on Parv, he left Zoeya and Rythian to catch up. He allowed the soothing ramblings of Parv to wash over him as he lost himself in deep thought.

Perhaps he wasn’t the mighty solutionist who could solve everyone’s problems, who could just barge into the world and lord over everyone else, who could take the world’s problems onto himself.

That was okay, though.

A world was a precious thing, after all.

They could rebuild it.

 

\--- end ---

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for staying with me on this wild ride. :)
> 
> Below is what I listened to while writing this. A soundtrack, if you prefer.  
> ( http://bloodandchaos.tumblr.com/post/93750493463/the-solutionist-verses-the-endermage-musix )
> 
> Thanks to the people I've shown this to, especially metalmeisje for beta reading this!


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